Revenge of the Vinyl Cafe

Revenge of the Vinyl Cafe is one of those books that holds no real ‘surprises' in it - if you're familiar at all with Stuart McLean's writing, either read on CBC Radio or in the previous VC books, you know what you're going to get: A series of poignant and sometimes hilarious stories about Dave, a record store owner, his wife Morley, and their two kids.

The lack of surprise doesn't detract at all from McLean's gift as a storyteller. He's capable of taking these tiny moments that seem completely innocuous and turning them into grand adventures, and can bring an audience to tears or laughs over the course of a simple paragraph.

If there's one set theme to these stories I would say it's about how important stories are to the human experience. Sometimes this is made explicit, like in the story with Dave trying to read his library's only copy of Goldfinger, but sometimes it's more subtle.