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By Windspeaker.com Staff
With files from Jeremy Harpe
The Edmonton Journal describes Oil Change At Rath’s Garage as a “gripping yarn” that revolves around two dysfunctional families who wind up living across from each other.
This is the debut novel of long-time Windspeaker Contributor Shari Narine, who says it’s a book about relationships—“The fear of commitment, the need for power, the sacrifices that family demands, and about how broken and damaged we can all be.”
Oil Change at Rath’s Garage is now in stores, including Chapters, but Narine is launching the book in Edmonton at Audrey’s Books, 10702 Jasper Ave. tomorrow, May 16, at 7 p.m.
“At the heart of the book is what I consider a love story between two brothers, Matt, who is 16, and Ben who is 11, the things they go through and how they stick together. How much they love each other,” Narine told Jeremy Harpe of CFWE-FM.
Oil Change is written through the points of view of five people. The boys are pulled through life by their father Jack Humphreys, moving into a town, staying for a short time, and then on the road again.
And the book deals with today’s youth hook-up culture, the whole question about casual sex. “Is it just sex or where does love fit into all this? and whether everything is just physical,” she told the Edmonton Journal.
“So I hope it’s something that speaks to young adults, to make them reflect on where they’re going with their lives.”
She shared with Harpe the challenges of bringing her first novel, whose main characters came to her in a dream, to completion.
“Part of the biggest challenge is that it’s a process. It’s something that I never realized. It’s a process in writing it. It’s a process in getting a publisher. It’s a process in marketing. And when I started writing, when I thought I’d finished writing, I hadn’t finished writing. There’s always different ways to improve it, different ways to go back at it.”
She said she got lucky because the Writers Guild of Alberta had a mentorship program and she got chosen to take part.
“So, I worked with an experienced writer and she showed me things that I had kind of stumbled into, but wasn’t doing deliberately. So she showed me how to set up scenes, how to make every word count, how to make what the characters did… make sure that everything had a purpose.”
There was also the challenge of switching from journalism style to fiction style, Narine explained. “I joke that I wanted to embellish, and figured journalism wouldn’t be the appropriate genre, so I started fiction writing,” she told Windspeaker.com.
“My first draft for Oil Change was very straight forward… pretty much no embellishment. I had to go through and add the details like setting, description, movements, things like that. My editor calls my writing “spare” and I would agree, and I would say it’s because of 30 years of journalism.”
When Narine finished with her mentor, she sent the book out to publishers and it was accepted by Thistledown Press, which assigned her an editor.
“He was fantastic. But it was the same thing. I learned a lot from him. So, it’s been an incredible process, incredible learning process, and hopefully, when I do my next book—and I say ‘when’—I will start at a much higher degree, because I’ve learned so much from the first one.”
Narine’s next step is to promote the book while doing more fiction writing.
“I’m hoping to do some writers in residency. I’ve actually got one lined up for October in Saskatchewan. It’s a one month grant that I received. Just found out about. I’ve very excited about that” she told Harpe.
“I’m going to be hitting libraries in north-eastern Alberta on a tour, near the mid-to-end of June. So I’m hoping to go a little bit more forward with this.”