"If you want to understand the real Canada, observes a character in Jim McEwen's invigorating debut novel, a good place to start is Wing-nite Wednesday in any small town, including the eponymous Fearnoch... In probing Fearnoch's squalor and his characters' failures, McEwen has revealed the irresistible greasy heart of those Wing-nite Wednesdays. And in this Canada, love, as sentimental as it sounds, is the hottest sauce of all."

"This is rich, loamy writing, vivid, precise and often funny. Even minor characters are considered with insight and flair."

"Jim McEwen attends to people and place like a young David Adams Richards but writes with the irreverent wisdom of Denis Johnson. Reading Fearnoch is like falling through a frozen pond, then being warmed up with tea and beer by the fire."

"Fearnoch centres on sorrow and the brute force of nature, but at the same time illuminates blood ties and humanity, redemption and remembrance, an unexpected and memorable treat where every sentence counts."

"Welcome to Fearnoch! If Charles Dickens grew up on the Ontario/Quebec border, spoke a little Franglais, and knew a whole lot about farming and minor league hockey, then he might be able to create a cast of characters as memorable as this one. Jim McEwen's beautiful portrait of a community in transition is simultaneously intimate and vast, loving and angry, tender and hilarious. If you are from anywhere, or if you have ever been caught in the swirling, primal forces that sometimes push us towards and sometimes pull us away from 'home, ' then this is the book for you."