ECW Press, 2006

Read by a.rawlings

In Emily Schultz’s Joyland, brother / sister tag-team protagonists Chris and Tammy stand heartache to heartache through their obsessions with video games, boredom-dodging, and newly discovered sexuality. Schultz expertly raises from the dead 1984’s Southern Ontario summer with every ‘Fucken A’ and cigarette exhale.

Efficiently and effectively organized around a two-player narration and thirteen arcade game chapter ‘levels’ (’Berzer’ cleverly denoting the action’s peak), Joyland’s structure suits its content. And the novel’s as sound on a line-read; Schultz’s sentences please as they jostle, experimenting with verb / noun placement and squeezing the lemon pulp out of every simile.

‘The zipper toothed out a pffft…’

Tart. Strict. Splendid.

With the novel a full-on flashback, Schultz’s graceful epilogue provides closure and full disclosure as the narrator flashes forward to describe what becomes of the story’s players.

Joyland’s hardcover design makes it an unusual first novel from a small press publisher, as do the illustrations punctuating chapter breaks and featured on the cover. Graphic novelist Nick Powell depicts the black-and-cream visages with a similar hip-chic-coolness to Schultz’s prosody.

You might argue that my small-town background and child-of-the-’80s status may make me a reader predisposed to become infatuated with the heady world Schultz has penned, but let’s be clear: this prose shows mad skillz. Joyland’s sure to intrigue lovers of literary fiction for its strengths in description and syntactic gymnastics. Joyland ultimately left me with a longing for my next dose of Schultz’s brain candy.

This is recommended reading, nostalgic technicolour at its sharpest.

Joyland maps a believable world that depicts the grit and glitz of teenaged life in the small-town ’80s.

Fucken A+.