- Paperback
- Publisher: Cormorant Books; 1st Edition edition (2001)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1896951333
- ISBN-13: 978-1896951331
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,407,290 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
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 defence.
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
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Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Rooted in time and place
Sep 5 2007
Format:Paperback
This book is incredibly authentic. I couldn't put it down, really absorbing. Bill Gaston has tapped into character, time and place with incredible accuracy and empathy. It makes it easy to get insights and new questions about the universal concerns of love, death and family because the context is so genuine...particularly for those of us who grew up in the Canada of this era, but even, I suspect, for those who come at the story from outside that culture.
Bob Bonaduce, the main character, will be with me for a while.
Bob Bonaduce, the main character, will be with me for a while.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
What a gem!
May 22 2002
Format:Hardcover
It's rare in these busy times to stumble upon a novel worthy of the glorious yet exhausting all-night read. But within the first few pages of "The Good Body," I knew that a good night's sleep was not in the cards. It's 5AM in the morning; my work day is doomed, yet my mind still reels from the poetic beauty and honesty that is this novel. Can a mere book still move a jaded reader to tears? The answer, thanks to Lewis Nordan's "Sharpshooter Blues", Jonathan Franzen's "The Corrections," and now Bill Gaston's "The Good Body," is a resounding YES! What a triumph!
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2 reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
What a gem!
May 22 2002
Format:Hardcover
It's rare in these busy times to stumble upon a novel worthy of the glorious yet exhausting all-night read. But within the first few pages of "The Good Body," I knew that a good night's sleep was not in the cards. It's 5AM in the morning; my work day is doomed, yet my mind still reels from the poetic beauty and honesty that is this novel. Can a mere book still move a jaded reader to tears? The answer, thanks to Lewis Nordan's "Sharpshooter Blues", Jonathan Franzen's "The Corrections," and now Bill Gaston's "The Good Body," is a resounding YES! What a triumph!
What a disappointment
July 24 2006
This is not a very good novel at all.The story is not credible and unrealistic.The prose is dull and predictable.Most of the
characters are either bland general types or stereotypes.The only ones you'll even remotely care about are Bobby,Oscar,and
Margaret,because they're the only ones who seem to have any life to them.Forget it.There are other,better novels out now.
characters are either bland general types or stereotypes.The only ones you'll even remotely care about are Bobby,Oscar,and
Margaret,because they're the only ones who seem to have any life to them.Forget it.There are other,better novels out now.
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