I love being able to recommend Canadian authors, so I was happy to get my hands on Robert J. Wiersema's latest book, Bedtime Story, as part of my holiday reading. His first novel, Before I Wake, received great reviews, and I am confident this second novel will be likewise acclaimed.

The novel contains two plots, a book within a book, and plots within plots unfold as we read along. The main characters are Christopher Knox, an almost separated husband who still lives over the garage and helps raise his son, David who shares the main house with Christopher's almost-ex wife Jacqui.

Christopher is a writer whose first novel succeeded quite well. However, too many years have gone by without finishing his second novel for Christopher to not be losing faith in his ability as a writer. Coupled with his lack of failure as a husband, Christopher is desperate to be a success in at least one area of his life: fatherhood. As a way of marking his son David's eleventh birthday, he buys him a rare copy of a book he had enjoyed himself as a young boy.

David, at first disappointed he didn't get the Tolkien series, Lord of the Rings, soon finds himself immersed in his Dad's gift and becomes more and more distracted by the plot. Christopher is thrilled to have captured his son's attention, until the day that David suffers a seizure while reading and enters what becomes an enduring coma. The doctors are completely at loss as to the cause of the coma. Christopher is determined to figure out what is going wrong and soon begins to believe that the book itself has caused the coma.

The story now becomes two stories, the first being Christopher's attempts to find out how a book can be causing his son's coma, the second being David's story and how he is magically drawn into the knights and wizards legend where his own survival may depend on his succesfully completing a fictional quest.

This book delivers on many levels and is a fun blend of modern fiction writing and fantasy fiction. I am sure it will appeal to many types of readers.


To read the Globe and Mail review of this book, you can link to: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/bedtime-story-by-robert-wiersema/article1805935/