Home Movies

by Ray Robertson

Twenty-four-year-old James Thompson is in trouble. His record company is waiting for his third album, but Thompson has a good old case of writer’s block. In Home Movies, the remarkable debut novel by Ray Robertson, Thompson travels from Toronto to his small hometown of Datum, Ontario, where he finds all the material he needs to write songs from his eccentric family and the seductive 19-year-old aspiring poetess, Melissa.

Paperback

First published March 5, 2003

About the author

Ray Robertson is the author of six novels including Moody Food and What Happened Later, a finalist for the Trillium Book Award. He has also published a collection of nonfiction, Mental Hygiene: Essays on Writers and Writing. He is a contributing book reviewer for The Globe and Mail.

Robertson lives in Toronto.

Reviews

[Benjamin Kahn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing, as it started off very strongly. James Thompson, a country singer living in Toronto, has to return to the small town that he grew up in to rediscover his roots and hopefully find the inspiration to write the songs for his next album. All well and good. Once he gets there, however, the novel loses its momentum and starts to wander around.

Several scenes that could have been quite strong are weakly plotted, so they lose their emotional impact. There's a lot of weak dialogue and detours that don't really advance the plot. You can see that there's the foundation of a good novel here that's been let down by a scatter shot approach to plotting, and it lacks the hand of a strong editor. I started off really liking the book and finished up gritting my teeth and counting down the pages until it was over.