Andrew Wedderburn

This book was totally addictive to read, but by the finale I was left wondering what was the point. Wedderburn drew me in with the intriguing character of Audrey Cole, a young woman from Canmore, Alberta (woo, almost local!!!) whose biggest drive in life is to drive. This premise doesn't sound all that promising, since she doesn't actually make it to being a racer and essentially winds up as a roadie for a not very popular rock and roll band, but once Audrey hits the road and her backstory show more starts to get explored I had to find out how it all ended. Somehow during her travels with the band she ended up at a hotel in the Alberta wilderness, the titular Crash Palace, a place of iniquity, fun, and a whole lot of drinking. We spend most of the book waiting to see whether Audrey actually has any fun at the Crash Palace (a seeming eden for parties), but besides mixing drinks for people, small conversations with the band, and an unexpected pregnancy the story is almost devoid of drama. This technique does keep us hooked until the final pages, especially once Audrey decides to visit the Crash Palace once again years later and gets stuck there in a blizzard, but the arbitrary ending is rather unsatisfying. If you're a fan of slow burn stories and want to explore the relative meaninglessness of small lives, then I would recommend this book, but otherwise I'm not quite sure what to make of it. show less

Andrew Wedderburn has written an ok book. It passed the 30-page test, where I decide whether to continue reading or not. But, I like stories that don’t tell me everything, make me work, are not predictable.

This might be a story about Audrey Cole, who loved cars and wanted to be a rally driver.
It might be about rock bands in early 21st century Canadian dive bars.
Maybe it’s about drug dealing, low lifes and crime bosses.
Maybe about a single mother trying to come to terms with some show more things from her past.

Much is left out, but then some scenes are full of detail. Detail about obscure, maybe real-life, bands. About learning to play pinball. About magic tricks. About how to drive from one place to another in Alberta and British Columbia.

It is like meeting someone good at telling stories, and they spend considerable time telling long tales that may or may not round up to conclusions, stories that may or may not connect.
The storyline is cinematic, in the sense that it is made up of sub-plots crosscut through different time periods, times hard for me to keep track of. When a book interests me, I’m willing to make a character list, and even plot out quirky time shifts. I did both of those things for this novel, these connected sets of short stories. show less

I received this book as a LibraryThing Early Reviewer. I tried to like this book but got about 1/3 of the way through before I had to set it aside. The author initially gives a brief look at present-day Audrey then jumps right into Audrey's past starting in her youth with her preoccupation with driving/racing. I did not feel that the character development happened quickly enough to hold the reader's attention, nor did I find the character development in the first 70 pages to be all that show more thorough. Sure, she clearly was fixated on cars at a young age and fell into driving for a living by haphazard and circuitous means. Buy why? I just wasn't captivated enough with Audrey or her story to stick around to find out. I hope that by the end of the story, Audrey finally found what she was running towards and resolved what she was escaping. I have read worse books by less-skilled authors, and Mr. Wedderburn is clearly intelligent. But intelligence alone was not enough to hold my interest for the rest of the book. show less

I enjoy reading other reader's comments on books I have read and "The Crash Palace '' has some varying reviews. My own reading experience was mostly positive - I like to read things that are a little bit different from the usual type of story and enjoyed the story line and the characters. The book kept my interest throughout and I especially appreciated the way the flash backs were handled by showing the date at the start of the chapter. However I was very disappointed with the way the book show more ended. I felt the incident with the kitten could have been handled much differently and Audrey could still have found closure with her past. I have always felt that a really good fiction writer should be able to find a way to make a plot point without unnecessarily harming an animal or small child and I try not to read books where this happens. There is even a site for others who feel the same - https://www.doesthedogdie.com/ Because of this I did not rate the book as highly as I would have otherwise done. show less