Based on a True Story
2016
- canada
- novel
- humor
- snl
- fiction
- actors
- comedians
- biography
- nyt:combined-print-and-e-book-nonfiction=2016-10-09
- actors, biography
The story
Fictional Memoir. A Novel containing scattered facts which are interleaved into fictional stories creating a journey through a fictional memoir of the author, which includes growing up in rural Canada, his SNL (TV show) days and many other anecdotes. This is an adventure and a retrospective of life. A humoristic literary work with a very unique style, matching the author's comedic and reflective take on life.
What it’s like
Dry, deadpan and conversational, the prose reads like a barstool monologue delivered by a man who is perfectly willing to let a story collapse into a pun and then go back for another. Sentences are loose and digressive, full of tangents, self-deprecating asides and mock-earnest reflections, with the rhythm of a voice that knows exactly where the laugh is hiding and withholds it until you've stopped expecting it. Small-town Canadian winters, cheap motels, late-night studio hallways and the sour little rituals of show business are sketched in quick, unfussy strokes rather than lush description, so the sensory world stays modest and conversational. The mood is wry, wistful and faintly melancholic underneath the jokes, a comic retrospective of a life that has not gone as planned and is not especially sorry about it. Nothing here is graphic; the darkness is existential and emotional rather than violent, and the book's tone is warm and mischievous throughout. Best suited to a lazy weekend, a long train ride, or a comfort reread, for readers who love sly, rambling, anecdote-driven humour and a narrator who sounds like a friend telling tall tales over a drink.
More books like Based on a True Story
Closest in mood, pacing and theme. Tell us why you loved Based on a True Storyand we’ll explain which ones fit you.
