Fiction Pick of the Week: Tourists

Tourists by Richard B. Wright, first published in 1984, acquired by the library in 2008
If you enjoy reading literary Canadian fiction with an element of dark humour, I have just the book for you! This past week, I read the novel Tourists, which has been newly acquired by the library although it was actually written in 1984. I had enjoyed reading Wright’s Clara Callan and Adultery, and despite the fact that Tourists is quite different from these other two works, I found I could hardly put it down. The story’s setting alternates between Ontario and Cozumel and is narrated by Philip Bannister, a prim and proper boarding school teacher who finds himself on a torturous holiday in Mexico with his vampy wife Joan and the boorish couple Ted and Corky Hacker from Nebraska. Early on we discover that murder has occurred and the rest of the book relays how it all unfolded. Despite the dark subject, it is quite comical to witness Philip Bannister’s reaction to the lascivious behaviour of his wife and their new friends. The suspense builds along with Bannister’s repressed anger and paranoia and the final chapters of the book develop into a real page-turner!