Mark Victor Young

Happily married since 1992 and a father since 2003, Mark has been a writer for as long as he can remember. He was born in Toronto and grew up in London, Canada. He was the first winner of the Lillian Kroll Prize for Creative Writing at Western University, where he also completed a degree in English Literature. He has published novels, poetry, short fiction, feature articles, comic strips and book reviews in various media.

He lives with his wife and daughter in London.

Read more of this interview.

Website: http://markvictoryoung.com/
Twitter: @markvictoryoung
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https://www.amazon.com/author/markvictoryoung

adolescence    aging    awkwardness    best mystery    bike courier    buddy comedy    business fiction    comic strips    comics    coming of age    contemporary fiction    coroporations    drugs    friendship    humor about relationships    insurance    insurance adjusting    kidnapping    literary and fiction contemporary fiction short stories single authors    love    loyalty and betrayal    marriage    paris 1920s    relationships    religion and spirituality    romance    shakespeare    shakespearean homage    stages in life    toronto    unlikely detectives    voodoo story   

• Waterfall Dance on March 18, 2011
  
  Well-written, intelligent, gripping in parts and quite emotional in others. The book opens with an almost Mike Hammer style of describing the main character's law firm and his participation in an online gaming alter-ego as a private detective. His good-natured banter with his legal assistant, his ex-lover and his prospective clients was quite funny, but also effective at telling us this character is working hard at keeping up a sense of ironic detachment and emotional distance. But then along came the case that broke apart his barriers. First he falls for his client, then for her chimps, as he takes an unwinnable case and then becomes caught up in the whole thing. The book does an excellent job of portraying the argument for animal sentience and against animal testing and use by humans. The legalese is clear and explained where necessary and the courtroom segments were great. We really come to know the main characters well and even the "villains" in the piece are human and not just all hated, all the time. Not specifically an animal rights book, nor exclusively a courtroom drama or romantic comedy, this novel is able to blend all these elements in a really great read that keeps you turning pages.
  
• Marvellous Hairy on May 11, 2011
  
  A lot of funny, quirky characters in search of a Shakespearean play in a highbrow romp of a sci-fi story. There's an evil megacorp and a devolving humanoid author as well as many minor dramatic players who find themselves caught up in a midsummer night's kidnapping plot. Very witty narration and a lot of action and amusing banter make this a quick read from about a quarter of the way through to the end. Many of the characters are taken directly from Midsummer Night's Dream. Robin Goodfellow (Puck) becomes Rob Goodman whose good friend Helena works at the megacorp which is doing evil experiments on their other friend Nick Motbot (Really? Bottom just mixed up? What kind of name is that?) who slowly begins turning into a monkey instead of an ass. The fairies are all here: Peaceblossom is "Blossom," Mustardseed is "Seedy" Besterdson the drug dealer and Mrs. Moth and Starveling are themselves (and what else could they be?). Peter, Francis and Tom of "The Mechanicals" theatre group are mechanical engineers. Poor Oberon and Titania, the king and queen of the fairies, are here turned into a weather satellite and laptop computer respectively. Sad, really. I consider the last three quarters of this book to be five star worthy. But then there's that confusing, scattershot mindf**k of the first quarter. Perhaps it's a necessary dissociation from our world which has to occur to really prepare you for the book's alternate reality. The story opens at a wedding at a rather breakneck pace where madness and monkeys rule the day and we don't know why or who to care about or what's going on. Despite the really intimate first person narration, we don't really know anything about Rob Goodman or how he relates to the story until several chapters in, despite the fact that he seems omniscient somehow and narrates events in which he took no part. I still don't really get what the crazed wedding scene had to do with the rest of the plot. Maybe it was like a bad dream and I should think but that and all will be mended. Maybe it was just to get us thinking about the destructive power of monkeys, I don't know. One piece of help the book offers is a list of characters or "Dramatis Personae" in the opening pages to which the reader can refer if confused, as I was. Unfortunately, I read this book on my e-reader and discovered a limitation of the medium: it's not easy to flick back and forth from a map or list in one part of the book to another. I know it can be done and maybe that kind of facility will come with time, but it was a limiting factor for my enjoyment of the book (not the author's fault) in the beginning. Also, I'll just mention copy editing is a problem in a lot of books these days, whether professionally or independently published. Nuff said. Once I got into it, however, all quibbles aside, this book really moved and was funny and absorbing and a great read overall. I look forward to reading some of Rayner's other books.