Book Review: TurboJetslams

TurboJetslams 

I loved this book, as much as I hated it. It you have cottagey friends, or people who liked the 'good old days' of spending quiet days by the lake, or those who like canoe camping, be sure and take it as a guest gift. The cover sort of turned me off, until I began reading. Then, I recognized all of the neighbours, renters, and new cottage owners I'd met in Muskoka! The ones who brought city ways to rural Muskoka.

Now, I just wrote a poem about lake life:
Lake Etiquette - a dream or nightmare, but Richards wrote a sarcastic novel. It might have made me feel better, too!

TurboJetslam is Richards' name for jetskis, or Personal Water Craft. Water Craft *is* too benign a term for them, as they do figure 8's in front of your dock. They let the 8-year-old drive the jetslam. Or the dudes who like to fish just off your dock, where you swim, and leave their lures behind. Or running over the loons. Shooting, target practice, or hunting season.

There, in the book, were the same neighbours we met, who bought a cottage with another family. Trailers of jetskis for the weekend. Renters who didn't believe you had to get up in the morning for work.  Bonfires and leaf burning. Fireworks every night for two weeks. (We called the cops. We should have called them again. They were worse after our fine OPP had left. In a drunken, loud party animal state they launched canoes at 2:00 a.m.)

Yes, the one who peed off his boat, while his buddies fished, and we were having a coffee by the lake. The fireworks at 2:00 a.m., the ATVs on the road at 4:00 a.m., the 6' bonfires in the middle of the day, the blaring music on the boats across the calm lake. Richards calls them idiots, but we call them citiots. Even worse, waterskiing at dusk, sans lights, screaming in the sunset.

What Richards has done is brilliant. At first, I began getting irritated as I read about a familiar character, or a familiar scenario from our time living on the lake. Then, as the main character amps up her game, I see the thrill in the planning and the retribution she undertakes for pay back.

From the publisher

You ever have a neighbour whose behaviour is so mind-bogglingly inconsiderate and so suicide-inducingly annoying that you just want to ask him, in a polite Canadian way, to please stop? TurboJetslams isn’t like that. Jass Richards’ new novel, TurboJetslams: Proof #29 of the Non-Existence of God, tells the tale of one person’s pathetic and hilarious attempts to single-handedly stop the destruction of a little piece of beautiful Canadian wilderness by the increasing numbers of idiots who couldn’t care less. A perfect cottage-warming gift. Boomer lit. Sure to resonate with paddlers everywhere.