Running on Fumes by Christian Guay-Poliquin , Translated by Jacob Homel
When the electricity inexplicably goes out nationwide, the mundanities of life gradually shift to the rigours of survival. In this post-apocalyptic setting, an unnamed mechanic jumps into his beat-up car and drives east, journeying 4,736 kilometres to reach his dying father.
As the narrator’s journey becomes one of essentials – gasoline, water bottles, and gas-station food – and as the crisis engulfing his surroundings begins to weigh on him ever more, he seeks refuge in a woman, and later, with a fellow traveler he meets on the road, two kindred souls who seem to seek a different sort of redemption.
As the road grows longer, and the narrator’s exhaustion grows in kind, parallels are drawn between his own journey through this labyrinth and Theseus’s journey through the primeval Labyrinth. In the end, the obsession with which he pursues the beast – which he will ultimately find – will be his undoing.
Click here to search for this book at the Atwater Library.