The Good Body

National Post (Canada)

Wonderful...The author has given Bob 'Loose' Bonaduce a fully imagined world to inhabit, and thoughts and emotions you might associate more with a tragic poet...A heartbreaking, funny portrayal of a man who has left the rink but is still struggling to play the game.

National Post

Wonderful.... A heartbreaking, funny portrayal of a man who has left the rink but is still struggling to play the game.

Globe and Mail Toronto

Gentle, humorous, absurd, beautiful, spiritual, dark and sexy. He deserves to dwell in the company of Findley, Atwood, or Munro.

Denver Post

Poignant and bittersweet...a testament to Gaston's skill as a storyteller.

National Post

A heartbreaking, funny portrayal of a man who has left the rink but is still struggling to play the game.

Toronto Globe and Mail

Gentle, humorous, absurd, beautiful, spiritual, dark, and sexy. He deserves to dwell in the company of Findley, Atwood, or Munro.

Cleveland Plain Dealer

Rich with humor and poignancy, The Good Body is Gaston's entry to the big leagues.

Orlando Sentinel

The Good Body is a witty, heartbreaking and unpredictable tale, whose fictional charcaters seem to breathe on the page...

Thomas McGuane

A winning, moving book filled with achy humanity and rueful, well-earned humor.

Jim Harrison

Unpredictable, harrowing and engrossing.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Although a quick synopsis of Canadian writer Gaston's American debut might sound maudlin--a rootless minor-league hockey player contracts multiple sclerosis and goes home to make peace with the family he's neglected for years--the novel itself is not. Told in finely calibrated prose that captures not only the agonizing eloquence of a body betraying its tenant but the rough-edged mumble of a professional athlete's voice, the novel walks a fine line with certainty and grace. Forty-year-old Bobby Bonaduce keeps mum about his illness, deciding not to retire from hockey in the U.S. and return to Fredericton, Canada, hoping to score sympathy points with Leah Miller, the wife he left 10 years before but never divorced, and Jason, his 20-year-old son with whom he exchanges about four letters every two years. Instead, he enrolls as a graduate student in English at the University of New Brunswick in order to play hockey on his son's team. Neither classes nor family reconciliation go as smoothly as Bobby hopes, and the ensuing mix of hilarity and heartbreak gives the book its sweet, gritty signature. The prodigal student rents a room from a group of young students, becoming close friends with one of them--a wry young woman named Margaret--and, in a clever twist, with Oscar, Leah's current lover. Although the narration dips into a few other characters' minds, Bobby is the star of this show; he confronts his dilemmas with the hopefulness of a child and the bravado of an oncoming truck. A seamless tone (one that isn't "afraid to sing it into sweet words"), a cast of warm, genuine characters and a confluence of unlikely but wholly believable events bring this modern hero to life. (Feb. 16) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

An immensely likable first US appearance for Canadian poet and novelist Gaston, who brings to engaging life the black-comic trials and tribulations of a former semipro hockey player contending with multiple sclerosis and (though he'd never call it this) separation anxiety. Out of hockey at 40 and very much deserving his nickname, Bob "Loose" Bonaduce impulsively enrolls at the University of New Brunswick, planning to earn a master's degree in English (he's formally educated and a sometime poet) while reuniting with (and perhaps playing collegiate hockey alongside) his son, Jason. Gaston gives his narrator Bob an agreeable, attractive voice-wry, witty, and not about to be easily impressed-by the hilariously described graduate seminars he attends, the passel of much younger housemates he cohabits with, or the enervating disease that's slowly stalking him. The novel commands a broad range of scenes and effects. Brief flashbacks and terse excerpts from Bob's writing exercises (which rudely fictionalize the lives of various friends and acquaintances) mix seamlessly with the more extensive present action: Bob's hesitant overtures toward both Jason and his mother, Leah, whom Bob abandoned but never divorced; and his bonding with Leah's new mate, Oscar, a beautifully realized secondary character. Even better drawn is Bob himself, fully rounded and most appealing with his rugged fatalism, rough-hewn wit, and genuine love for the boy he walked away from. Jason is, Bob well knows, his best reason for fighting in the creases with MS: "because of this son's existence, life would never be empty." A few rock-music references and bar-hopping bits seem pretty generic, and the closing pages donotrefrain from jerking a few tears, but, hey, if you liked the film Breaking Away, let's say, there's no reason to resist the many charms of Good Body. Yet another good novel from Up North. Canadian fiction is more than coming into its own; it may be the wave of the immediate fictional future.