The Good Body - Softcover

Gaston, Bill

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0887849601 ISBN 13: 9780887849602

Publisher: House of Anansi Press, 2010

Synopsis

The Good Body is a triumphant blend of mordant humor and heartbreak. By turns hilarious and poignant, it’s the story of retired pro-hockey ruffian Bobby Bonaduce, who is stubbornly ignoring a disease that may be killing him. Bobby returns to his hometown and scams his way into university in a misguided attempt to redeem his messy past and lay emotional claim to a son he abandoned 20 years earlier. With this acclaimed novel, Bill Gaston demonstrates yet again that he is one of the best chroniclers of men and sports.

About this title

Review:

To say that Bill Gaston's The Good Body is hilarious is to miss the profound forest for the mesmerizing trees. Oh, The Good Body will split you with laughter (how could a story of an aging semi-pro hockey player cheating his way into a graduate creative writing program not?), but the comedy is in fact another aspect of the novel's intimate understanding of its characters. It is this closeness that wires The Good Body with an electric psychology alternately hilarious, insightful, affirming, and terrifying.

None of Bob Bonaduce's career of hockey violence prepares him for the crushing blow he receives in a doctor's office after one foot doesn't stop tingling and his hands suddenly go clumsy. Sent into the boards by the body that has given him a career, a broken marriage, and the purest grace he has ever known, Bonaduce decides to reintroduce himself to his estranged son. What better way to do that than to play hockey on the same varsity team? Life on the road has given him plenty of time to read. He's tried some writing. If he needs to be a student to play with his son, isn't creative writing really the thing? Application portfolio? Oh, Bonaduce can get around that defense.

Fellow players, housemates, ex-lovers, and classmates all meet Gaston's unflinching honesty, alternately kissed by sympathy or slashed by damning eyes. With Gaston's uniquely polymorphous talent, humor, insight, sex, and tragedy all are marks of a voice that is so comforting for the wounds it both opens and heals. --Darryl Whetter

About the Author:

Bill Gaston is the author of several works of fiction, including the Scotiabank Giller Prize finalist Mount Appetite, the Governor General's Literary Award finalist Gargoyles, and the acclaimed novels, Sointula, The Good Body, and The Order of Good Cheer. Gaston was the inaugural recipient of the Writers' Trust of Canada Timothy Findley Award, for a distinguished body of work. He lives in Victoria, British Columbia.

About this edition

• Publisher: House of Anansi Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0887849601
• ISBN 13: 9780887849602
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 296