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Art & Books Books

Spaz

SPAZ by Bonnie Bowman (Anvil), 359 pages, $20 paper. Rating: NNN


Are you one of those people who can’t pass a shoe store without trying on that pair in the window? Do you fantasize about having a footwear collection of Imelda Marcos proportions? Then Bonnie Bowman’s Spaz is the book for you.

Young Walter Finch, Agincourt-born and bred, has malfunctioning feet that make him walk in an awkward way. When his mother takes him to a remedial shoe store, Walter realizes he may have found his calling. Though he has to wear his new shoes on the wrong feet and must bear up under some intense bullying (the source of his nickname, Spaz), he privately begins to design shoes, developing the foot fetish to end all foot fetishes in the process.

Soon he’s working in a shoe store, then managing one in the Beach, where he waits on the girl of his dreams only to have her disappear, taking the shoes she’s tried on with her. When his fairy tale princess, Laura, finally returns, Walter falls hard but learns there may not be a happily ever after.

Bowman peoples her story with some great characters – Walter’s outsized single mother, Joy his eccentric live-in grandmother, Clara and the mentally challenged girl down the street among them – but Spaz works because the author makes us care about Walter. She’s taken a slightly broken personality and made him into a compassionate artistic visionary.

Bowman’s satire is mostly successful, especially when it comes to sending up shoe store patrons who pretend their feet are smaller than they are. But not always. The priapic shrink who marries Walter’s mother, for example, is too broad. And Walter’s peeping Tom moments are over the top.

But credit Bowman with taking some serious risks, starting with what some might see as a politically incorrect title. This is a sexually explicit riff on obsession and foot fetishism featuring a character who, against all odds, is surprisingly appealing. Plus: Agincourt isn’t exactly a popular literary setting.

Write Books at susanc@nowtoronto.com

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