The Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis: A Review

I started reading The Best Laid Plans after listening to a few chapters of Fallis' follow-up, The High Road, which is available free from iTunes.  While you don't need to have read The Best Laid Plans first, it's the backstory and so I downloaded it onto my Kindle (it was my first Kindle purchase!) and read it in a couple of sittings.

It's a very funny book, and won the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour in 2008.  Telling the story of a reluctant Liberal candidate in a very Tory riding east of Ottawa, it gives an insider's view of politics on the Hill and off, the backroom biting and glad-handing, all wrapped up in snow, scotch, and (a little bit of) sex.

The story is told by Daniel Addison, an English Professor at University of Ottawa and until recently, a speech-writer on the Hill. Addison needs to find a Liberal candidate to run in a very Tory riding and he manages to convince a Scottish Mechanical Engineering professor to throw his name in the race in exchange for a promise that the probability that he wins is nil, and for teaching his English for Engineers course.  With no hope of winning, Angus McLintock agrees to the deal.  What transpires is part slapstick and part very sharp satire.

I enjoyed this book immensely.  As a Canadian, I particularly liked reading about our own electoral process/shenanigans, and would pick up anything by Fallis in a snap.  

Highly Recommended