Come, Thou Canadian Readers: Chad Pelley to be Canada Reads Unofficial Sixth Judge.

So, Canada voted for its “Essential Read of the Last Ten Years” and Jessica Grant’s multi-award-winning Come, Thou Tortoise made the top 40!

But. Not this morning’s top 10.

Not one to sit by while Canada suffers the loss of literary enlightenment,

and savouring Grant’s gifted wordsmithery, I have a plan.

I, Chad Pelley, will be crashing CBC Canada Reads panel discussions as an uninvited sixth judge, defending Jessica Grant’s Come, Thou Tortoise. Be sure to tune in and see me getting hauled off stage, maybe more than once, in 2011.

Be sure to read the book by then. (The book that won The National Post/The Afterword’s “Canada ALSO Reads” competition last spring.)

Salty Ink: Why are you so passionate about this novel?

Chad Pelley: Picture fireworks: some burst tomato-red and others Christmas-green and some do a crackling machine gun noise you weren’t expecting. Every book has merit in the same way every firework packs its own punch, but Jessica Grant’s Come, Thou Tortoise is the whole show, start to finish. It’s every colour, pop, and bang. I have not ever laughed or loved a book this much, because there has never been another book like it. It’s not a “so what’s it about?” scenario. This book transcends that. Reading this book is like holding on to fireworks.

The qualities of Jessica Grant’s writing are beyond words, and for that reason she is the freshest, most readably original voice in the country. She’s a natural wordsmith with diction crisper than celery, and she’s more witty than the ocean is wet. She’s written a novel not one other author could have possibly conceived. You filter Jessica Grant’s wit and wording through her main character, Audrey Flowers, and you end up with the most endearing character to ever grace a Canadian novel, who sees and describes the world in a consistently bright way. Example, she describes Sylvester Stallone as “bullety.” No one has ever used that adjective before, that apt neologism, but it’s perfect, right? It’s no wonder Michael Winter, a CanLit icon known for his own attention to detail, endorsed this novel with a plea, “Please — I beg you dear reader — read Jessica Grant.’

Come, Thou Tortoise was a Globe and Mail Book of year in 2009, it won the Winterset Award and the big-deal Amazon.ca Best First Novel Award, and a handful more besides that. The critics have sounded off with all the fervour of firecrackers trapped in a can, and now it’s ready for CBC’s Canada Reads. It has the funniest passages I’ve ever read and busts down the walls of what can be done with language and the novel form. It even has leagues of book lovers across the country adopting Audrey’s catch phrases. Jessica Grant is a lingual wizard and CBC’s Canada Reads is the perfect stage to showcase her magic.

Disclaimer: I am not knocking other peoples’ accomplishments here, and congrats to all ten of these authors. See this wonderful trailer for Zoe Whitall’s Bottle Rocket hearts, for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYMZ9RnHSb8

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