Cherry Bomb by Willard Thurston
An intellectually snobbish, would-be writer living in his employer’s treehouse. The exhibitionist thespian daughter of a beleaguered preacher. A “muscled mercenary thug” with little compunction for killing, whether for hire, vengeance or sport. A sinister Iranian-Russian plot to shuttle a nuclear artillery shell to America’s borders and elicit under-the-radar diplomatic concessions. An international autumn festival in Vancouver. What do they all have in common?
In Willard Thurston’s Cherry Bomb: Explosive Reckonings, a variety of characters, agendas and events head on a collision course toward each other with unexpected results. It’s a tragicomedy of errors as plans are foiled, idealism and naivete bumble into danger, and the wicked are stymied at every turn. Add in some afterlife hijinks and an experimental theatre troupe whose “in your face” politics are met variously with bewilderment, lecherous voyeurism and one particularly violent evening of mayhem, and you have a recipe for a very entertaining read.
CHARACTERS CAUGHT UP IN A DANGEROUS WEB
Randy Glasser, the aforementioned treehouse dweller, runs afoul of Russian operatives at the Vancouver festival when he plays a prank on them for his own amusement. Having unwittingly hit on the nerve center of the Iranian-Russian plot, he soon finds himself the target of thugs tracking him down for “questioning.” Meanwhile, the sexy preacher’s daughter, Maureen Rutquist, draws the ire of Vijay the thug at a confrontational improv performance staged by the Dog the Father Et Cetera Theatre Sports Company, inheriting a few gaps in her smile and a dangerous stalker in the process.
Elsewhere, the nuclear artillery shell has been hidden for transport on the wrong scow in the harbor — and what’s worse, it so happens to be the very vessel intended for the launch of the grand finale fireworks at the festival. The stage is set, so to speak, for unbridled havoc as thugs pursue our two young protagonists while operatives desperately try to retrieve their “special package” from the scow before it potentially wipes out a chunk of Vancouver’s populace — all without tipping off the masterminds behind the plot to the blunders and unforeseen complications.
Throughout, a varied cast of characters intersect with each other’s lives in unexpected and often tangential ways, a web of coincidences that gradually tightens into a knot that binds them together with inexorable destiny — and, as the subtitle intimates, reckonings for faults and transgressions long overdue.
A UNIQUE VOICE IN LITERARY FICTION
If the entertainment of the plot weren’t enough, Thurston brings to Cherry Bomb a heady, language-centric writing style full of literary allusion and subtle punnery. His vast vocabulary will send you scrambling at times for your Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate, yet your attention to such details in his prose will be richly rewarded. Thurston is unequivocally a writer for lovers of language, for educated readers with a sense of humor. A writer’s writer, even.
What’s even more remarkable is how this style contrasts with the themes and subject matter woven into Thurston’s storytelling. It’s a universe where philosophical, highbrow intellectualism meets lowbrow prurience, where academics, “woke culture” and pop culture are equally and thoroughly lampooned. One is reminded at times of Vonnegut, Nabokov, Robbe-Grillet, but really these comparisons do not do full justice to the combination of experimentalism and broad parody inherent in Thurston’s writing.
It’s something you’ll need to experience firsthand.
This is a pre-publication review; meanwhile, Cherry Bomb: Explosive Reckonings may be obtained from the author’s website.
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About Willard Thurston:
Willard Thurston lives in British Columbia. One of the Sixties “floaters” … eventually a photographer and printer (retail advertising), illustrator and writer. He holds a degree in English and Early European History from the University of British Columbia.
