Backstabbing, bloodletting

Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World 
by Mark Waddell 

Toronto: Viking Canada, 2025
$26.95 / 9780735250321

Reviewed by Ron Verzuh

*

I feel sorry for poor Colin, the lead character in Vancouver Island writer Mark Waddell’s second novel. I, too, once slaved at a meaningless office job run by a giant bureaucracy. I had a boss like Ms. Crenshaw who wore prim suits with a colourful bow at the neck. Unlike Colin, who also wears a bowtie, my job did not lead to a world rescue attempt. 

Of course, I didn’t work for something called Dark Enterprises unless the federal government qualifies… or a telephone company. Those jobs can be stifling and competitive, for sure, but in Colin’s case, author Waddell takes it into another dimension. 

We are guided into an imaginary universe where Colin gets to punish his work colleagues for demeaning him and save his executive bosses from being eaten by a faceless monster, an Abomination, nicknamed The Thing.

I had a job similar to Colin’s in his role as a cursor-manipulating Human Resources officer. Powerless and fearful, the transplanted New Yorker is worried that he’ll be made redundant and sent to the early retirement category, a fate worse that purgatory in the fictitious corporate world of DE.

DE, by the way, could serve as a stand-in for your favourite corporate or official evil-doer, although the waters muddy on that point as the book continues. As I read on, the Trump organization seemed a possible substitute. Amazon, Walmart, and Google? These days, the Supreme Court might be suitable, or anything remotely associated with Elon Musk.

It’s a minefield out there, one that is every bit as frightening as anything Colin is facing and it’s all real, not fictional. No way a novelist could make it up, although author Waddell has done an excellent job of stick-handling around the danger zones erected daily by a monster force governing the world through executive orders.

By Chapter 6, Colin has declared that he wants unlimited power to exact revenge on other DE staff members. “I want to put a mark on the world so deep that no one will ever forget me,” he boldly states to the CEO of DE. With that he was hired as her assistant. Could this be based on J.D. Vance’s interview to be selected as Trump’s VP? Sorry, I digress.

A chapter later, Colin gets his marching orders from The Thing. As Waddell (The Body in the Back Garden) describes the scene: “Slowly, a towering, emaciated figure turned to face me, dressed exactly as it had been when it pulled itself from under my bed. It folded its too-long hands together and tilted its body toward me in a solicitous manner.”

Here, we pause to explain that the story has clearly veered into sci-fi territory. The Thing has arranged for Colin’s promotion. Now it’s payback time. We stray into ‘Goetheland’ where souls get sold to that other ‘thing’. Aladdin-like, Colin has released a genie and it now threatens to destroy the world. Harry Potter anyone? We are well into the realm of fantasy now. 

As I puzzled over Waddell’s intention in inventing this parallel reality, I wondered if the Covid-19 pandemic might have been the dreaded Thing. Or could it be ICE, the masked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Army that is currently invading several American cities? At the end of this long book, I remained lost as to what exactly The Thing might be in real life. It served Waddell’s purpose as a fictional device, but it steered the story beyond my suspend-belief capacity. Admittedly, this may be a book more suited to younger readers, those attracted to a range of superhero movies and video attack games. For me, it stretched credibility too far for too long.

Speaking of movies, Leonard Di Caprio’s new one, One Battle After Another, seems to be doing much the same thing as this highly imaginative portrait of Colin. Di Caprio plays “a revolutionary foot soldier” who dives into one misadventure after another. He plays the buffoonish hero in this “epic about good and evil, violence and power, inalienable rights and the fight against injustice.” 

The difference in Colin’s case is that he seems more interested in saving his job and winning Eric, his sweetheart, than in saving the world. But you be the judge in this Star–Wars-meets-The–Office deep dive into Colin’s chaotic life. 

Ron Verzuh is a writer and historian. [Editor’s note: Ron has recently reviewed books by R. Bruce Macdonald, George M. Abbott, Barry Potyondi, Brandon Marriott, Harpreet Sekha, The Simon Fraser University Retirees Association, and Bill Arnott for BCR.]

*

The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

“Only connect.” – E.M. Forster