The Grand Tour of Park Ex by Andreas Kessaris

Reviewed by Ian Thomas Shaw

The Grand Tour of Park Ex is the sequel to Andreas Kessaris’ debut collection of short fiction, The Butcher of Park Ex. Both books are set in the colourful, working-class, revolving-door immigrant neighbourhood of Park Extension in Montreal, where Kessaris grew up. In our Ottawa Review of Books review of the first collection, we noted that it had “a nice twist revealing the narrator’s personality in bite-size doses.” The same observation applies to the sequel—only this time, strike the “bite-size.” In The Grand Tour, Kessaris arrives fully formed, in the flesh and in the soul.

For someone who has known Andreas for more than a decade, these stories confirm many long-held personal observations about his rather larger-than-life personality, while demystifying others that had previously eluded my understanding. Full disclosure, then: this review reflects not only my pleasure in reading the book, but also my delight in uncovering the many layers of the author himself. What follows is therefore both a critical reading and a personal encounter with an exceptionally well-written work of biographical prose.

The sixteen stories that make up The Grand Tour of Park Ex constitute a memoir of sorts, steeped in self-deprecation and, to a lesser degree, self-aggrandizement. Kessaris’ Greek immigrant parents loom large in virtually every story. The stark dichotomy between a mother with movie-star looks, deep religiosity, and a fiery yet calculating drive for independence, and a taxi-driver father who chain-smokes, swears trilingually, professes strict atheism, and adheres to a brand of communism tempered by capitalist ambition, goes a long way toward explaining the author’s own idiosyncrasies. Both parents are shaped by the collapse of post-war Greece and the catastrophe of the Greek Civil War. Their separate arrivals in Canada mark not a tidy rags-to-riches narrative, but the pursuit of stability and new-found aspirations, the legacies of which they pass on to their son—for better or worse.

The collection opens with “Participant,” a story that neatly encapsulates Kessaris’ tone and moral sensibility. Madame Kessaris, barely fluent in English, enrolls in a government-sponsored French course—an admirable effort at integration. When it comes time to complete her first homework assignment, however, she asks her son Andreas to do it for her. Shocked by what he perceives as cheating, he refuses. She explodes in rage, hurling her textbook against the wall and declaring him “axristos” (good for nothing). Undeterred, she attends the course faithfully and later returns home triumphant, brandishing a plastic-framed certificate. On closer inspection, Andreas notices it bears only one word: participant. The story then folds inward, as Kessaris recounts his own brush with moral compromise in elementary school through the national fitness program ParticipAction. After two years of failing to earn a gold, silver or bronze merit badge, he resolves—briefly—to get in shape. Predictably, resolve gives way to television and inertia. Faced with another failure, he learns that gym teachers do not verify statistics closely and quietly falsifies his results. He earns a bronze badge, but the victory rings hollow. Years later, the adult narrator draws the lesson with Aesopian clarity: “Sometimes, it’s all right to be just a participant, as long as you try.”

The collection’s most humorous stories focus on Kessaris’ childhood and adolescence in Park Ex, the heart of Hellenic Montreal. His social world is almost entirely Greek—save, curiously, for the girls he attempts to romance. A portrait emerges of a young man who is emotionally stunted, socially awkward, nominally intelligent, and an underachiever both academically and physically. The story “Hot Dog” recounting his ill-fated attempt to ski on a high school trip, is emblematic: bravado outpaces ability, and humiliation follows swiftly. Rarely quick to own his failures, young Andreas often attributes them to his parents’ acrimonious divorce, despite the continued devotion of both parents, expressed à la grecque and often punctuated with exhortations to stop uttering “malakias” (literally “softnesses,” colloquially “stupidities”).

At times, the narrator risks sounding like a whiner, eager to pin adult shortcomings on his parents’ disunity and bullying by teachers and classmates. A recurring, sometimes unspoken refrain—Why doesn’t the world love and reward me when I’ve done nothing wrong?—hovers over several stories. Yet this is precisely where the charm and authenticity of Kessaris’ writing lie. He does not cast himself as a triumphant hero, but as an ordinary man beset by the same frustrations, insecurities, and self-deceptions as many of us. He is, in the best sense, a flawed hero.

The emotional arc of the collection turns when Kessaris begins to shed some of these flaws, particularly his bitterness and envy toward others who seem to be moving ahead while he remains stuck. Now in his forties, employed in a field tangentially related to his artistic ambitions, he meets his soulmate. Kay (a thinly veiled pseudonym for his real-life partner) enters the narrative like a benevolent envoy from Tyche, goddess of good fortune, with a nudge from Aphrodite. Those who know the real-life Kay will appreciate how deftly Kessaris captures her presence on the page. As in many enduring narratives, the lady redeems the fallen hero, guiding him out of social awkwardness, resentment, and self-doubt toward a shared future.

There is an undeniable sweetness to their relationship, immediately detected by Kessaris’ ageing mother, who insists they marry and that Kay wear her most treasured possession—a string of pearls—on the wedding day. No spoilers here, save to say that The Grand Tour of Park Ex ends on a harmonious note, though one that still allows the author a final, cathartic outburst of indignation, as if to release emotions long held in reserve.

In the end, Andreas Kessaris emerges as an open book: son of immigrants, writer, zig-zagger between fortune and misfortune, his self-worth earned at considerable personal cost, and finally anchored by love. The rest is detail—readily available to anyone who chooses to pick up the book.

The Grand Tour of Park Ex is published by Guernica Editions