cover image The Museum at the End of the World

The Museum at the End of the World

John Metcalf. Biblioasis (Consortium, U.S. dist.; UTP, Canadian dist.), $14.95 trade paper (272p) ISBN 978-1-77196-107-3

In this collection of linked stories, Metcalf’s first fiction since Adult Entertainment was published in 1990, he brings his trademark humor once again to Anglo-Canadian writer Robert Forde. A present-day story, “Ceazer Salad,” opens with Forde despairing over a review of his latest book, but other stories travel in time and location. Meditating on class and culture, Metcalf’s stories takes readers on a cruise where the characters wander grumpily around Byzantine ruins, into a tale of growing up in England in the ’50s, and through North America and its politics in the ’60s. The most interesting story, “Lives of the Poets,” is an extended comic tale in which Forde hosts a poet’s granddaughter, now elderly, when the university where he teaches honors the writer with a burial in Poet’s Corner. The two spend a day drinking, reminiscing, and setting the world to rights. Metcalf combines his recurring themes of coming-of-age and the inadequacies of education with his vast knowledge of literature and music. The characters, dialogue, and situations feel rather dated, but the curmudgeonly, pedantic narrator—an intellectual railing against the novel’s “modern” world and its curious cast of characters—is amusing, and the writing is sharp and funny. (Nov.)