Awards

King Leary was the 2008 winner the Canada Reads award. Canada reads is a “battle of the Books” where five famous personalities “champion” their book, explaining why they believe their book should be the winner. The winning book is then heralded as the book that all of Canada should read. The competition began as a radio show but television and a podcast have been added in recent years. At the end of each episode, the audience votes one book out of the competition. In 2008, Dave Bidini, a Canadian musician and author, championed King Leary to win the competition. This novel also won the Stephen Leacock award for humour in 1988 for being the best piece of humorous literature written by a Canadian in that year. King Leary is a worthy recipient of this award because the main character, Percival “King” Leary is so funny, always coming up with one-liners like, “There’s an ugly scab on his forehead; he has done battle with another wall.” King Leary is a great novel that is deserving of its accolades because, being a book largely about hockey, it has a Canadian feel to it that most Canadians can relate to, and due to the humorous content present in the novel.

Peer Pressure: Clay-Leary

Chapter 5 has a prevailing theme regarding influences, or more specifically, peer pressure. In this chapter, Clay Clinton pressured his best friend Percival Leary, into performing a socially unacceptable act. He managed to convince Leary to set a bag of flaming “dog dirt” on someone’s porch. Unfortunately for Leary, no one came to stomp the bag out and it resulted in an inferno that engulfed the house. This chapter shows how important it can be to resist peer pressure in order to keep out of trouble. It can also relate to every reader, including myself, because everyone has had to make the decision whether to cave to the pressure or to resist and every one can take the lesson that Leary learned away from this chapter.

Peer Pressure: Clay-Manny

In Chapter 9, the theme concerning peer pressure becomes more solidified. In this chapter, Clay Clinton once again pressured his friend into doing something improper. Manny Oz was Clay’s next victim and it happened after the boy’s reformatory hockey team had won the All Ontario Championships in 1995. After the finals, a celebratory party was organized for the team and naturally, Clay showed up. After greeting Leary, he disappeared to find Manny. Hours later, Manny fell through a stained glass window and began puking on the floor. In his hand was a small flask engraved with the two linked C’s that were Clay Clinton’s trademark. Peer pressure is an evident theme in this chapter because Manny succumbed to the peer pressure of Clay and got drunk. This chapter may also offer insight into themes that may develop later in the novel. Manny’s will was easily bent by Clay and this shows that Manny is an easily influenced character. This may affect the course of the novel if Manny continues to be influenced by Clay.

Shooting Star

Toward the end of the novel, when the life and times of Manfred Armstrong Ozikean had been revealed, I discovered that he was a character I had already met once before. The story of Manny’s rise and fall reminded me of Johnny from the Bad Company song called “Shooting Star.” In the song, Johnny became famous for playing guitar, just like Manny for his hockey prowess. Johnny and Manny both turned to alcohol during their fame and ultimately, it was their demise. Both of them died in their beds with a bottle of whisky and drugs. Another important similarity between the two characters is what happened to them after their deaths. The line in the song, “All the world will love you just as long, as long as you are a shooting star,” shows that people will only love Johnny as long as he is at the top. The same was true for Manny and this could be seen when he was left out of the hockey hall of fame because of his alcoholism. The two characters are very similar and this similarity is what makes the song relate to the novel so well.

Loof-weeda

During King Leary­, the author included certain elements that did not appear to add any value to the literature. King Leary was given multiple nick-names during the novel but one of them stood out. Manny’s great uncle gave Leary the nick-name loof-weeda and implied that it meant “wing song” or “wind music”, and that it referred to the way he skated. Later in the novel there were a few occurrences where I questioned the validity of this translation. One such occurrence was in a bar where Leary was talking about his nick-names. When Leary came to loof-weeda, a nearby Native American turned to Leary and apologized for the smell. This led me to believe that Manny’s Uncle was not truthful about the meaning of loof-weeda and that the actually definition was something closer to “flatulence”. Once I discovered this I wondered why the author would include this in the novel because I did not think it added any meaning to the text but upon further contemplation I realized why this was included. Quarrington added this part of the novel to show the reader what people actually thought of Leary. Because the novel is told from Leary’s point of view, we can assume that his account of the story is slightly biased. Leary makes it seem like he is a great man who is loved by everyone but loof-weeda shows at least one characters true opinion of Leary.

I’m Going to Make You Hurt

Another example of something that the author included in the book that doesn’t seem to add anything to the story comes in chapter 40. This chapter began after Leary had collapsed during the commercial shoot. After Leary got settled on the couch in the green room, everyone left the studio except for Blue Hermann. Then, Blue started to try to lay a beating on Leary, saying that Clay made Blue promise to make him hurt. It is unusual that this chapter was included because the author didn’t develop Blue into a character that would want to hurt Leary, despite Blue admitting that he wanted to. I think the reason that the author included this chapter was to show Leary and the reader that “The King of the Ice” wasn’t as great as he believed himself to be, to literally knock some sense into him.

Alcoholism

While reading King Leary it is blatantly obvious what the central theme of the novel is. The author used several different characters to display the main theme concerning the negative aspects of alcoholism. Nearly every major character in the novel is affected by their excessive drinking and the reader sees them ruin their lives through the sober eyes of King Leary. The three most important characters whose lives are affected by alcohol abuse are Clay Clinton, Manny Oz, and Iain. Clay Clinton was adversely affected by his alcoholism because he became abusive. While under the influence of alcohol, Clay became abusive and cold toward people, especially Janey. Clay also abused his power when he was drunk, most notably when he traded Manny to the New York Amerks so he could have Janey to himself. Manny also became abusive to Janey when he was drinking, and often beat her. He also became irresponsible and was often drunk for his games until he died in his bed with a bottle of whisky. Iain used alcohol to escape reality and often pretended that he was a famous actor or musician when he was intoxicated. Eventually, his drinking got so bad, Leary finally said to Iain what he could not say to Manny and told to stop drinking the alcohol that hurt him so bad. This was an important part in the book because I showed that Leary had learned that alcoholism affects the people who are close to the alcoholic as well as the alcoholic.