Description: Double Talk tells the story of Violet Budd and Brian (Baby) Power, two characters fleeing from their past. Brian is ambling after an immigrant's dream, and Violet is desperate to ditch her middle class origins for something more earthy and bohemian. Their contrary social and geographical flight paths intersect in St. John's, Newfoundland in the early 1980s, where, for a time, they find love, sex, and a safe haven in each other. No happy-ever-after story, Double Talk follows Violet and Brian over a fourteen-year period, starting at the end instead of the beginning, as the ordinary pressures of life bring to the surface the many differences that exist between them. Double Talk is a coming-of-age novel, a love story and an examination of social class and its mysterious codes.
Brief description: Patrick Warner was born and raised in Claremorris, Co. Mayo, Ireland. He moved to Newfoundland in 1980 in search of better weather and economic prosperity. Bitterly disappointed on both counts he turned to poetry, penning three critically-acclaimed collections between 2001 and 2009. Double Talk is his first novel.
Review Quotes: Near the end of Double Talk, Brian 'Baby' Power laments to himself,"Oh sweet mercy, was life ever just one thing at one time?"Since Double Talk is "a love story in reverse"by this point in the novel we've just spent 200 pages learning that love, like life, is never one thing at one time. Already author of three poetry collections, Double Talk is Patrick Warner's first novel. Beginning with a domestic abuse incident, Warner alternates chapters from Violet to Brian's memories of their relationship. The Newfoundland banter is spot on, as is the domestic tension that hangs like St. John's fog. Warner ably reveals Violet's character to explain how the relationship-ending abuse happened. But Brian, perhaps because like Warner moved from Ireland to the island only to find disappointment, is less disclosed