Sens at Land’s End

Puck Lit Project Review #5: The Good Body by Bill Gaston

Plot Summary: Bob Bonaduce is an aging career minor leaguer who, upon finding out that he has multiple sclerosis, decides to enrol in the creative writing program at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, hoping to play on the same varsity hockey team as his son Jason. In New Brunswick, he avoids dealing with his illness, tries to scrape by in school, and re-unites with his wife and son as well as making a few new friends.

Genre: Fiction

Hockey Content: Well, the book jacket specifically says that “Bonaduce’s story is not a hockey novel,” and it’s true — there isn’t a ton of actual hockey played in the book. However, when Bonaduce attempts to do his creative writing assignments he tends to write what he knows, and that’s hockey. There are some interesting and fun meditations on the game, and on playing in the minors.

Choice Quotation: “Waiting for tests, feeling better, he half-enjoyed the image of him in the corniest of scenarios. He was lying in a hospital bed, adult-diapered, limbs mobile as breakfast sausage, a professionally flirtatious nurse spooning vanilla dessert into his yop, and he asked the doctor (who’d be checking things off on his clipboard, brow furrowed, when everyone knows there’s nothing on the clipboard): Well, Doc, does this mean that’s it for the NHL?

“The doctor is a wise-ass hockey fan. He says, Hell no, Bobby — there’s always the Leafs.”

My Thoughts: Now that I’m a few books in to this hockey reading project of mine, I am starting to notice a few trends in hockey literature, one of which is that many hockey novels are really frickin’ depressing. They often have happy-sad endings — you know the kind: where something really bad happens, but something good comes out of it — but for the most part the tone in these books is one of regret and uncertainty. What is it about hockey that inspires people to write these sad, sad stories? Can’t there be an uplifting hockey novel? Maybe there is one and I just haven’t read it yet. At any rate, this one, like King Leary, could probably be described as a tragicomedy. Parts of it are very funny, but overall it’s not a happy story.

It’s also not what I would call an action-packed story, but that’s not a bad thing. Most of Bonaduce’s life involves small things like going to class or hanging around with roommates or just thinking, and Gaston writes Bonaduce’s internal life in a very entertaining way. Many of the characters in the book are memorable, and I really enjoyed the parts about Bonaduce’s schoolwork: the intersection of hockey and academia is amusing. The book pokes fun at those very irritating, pretentious people who look down on people who like sports (not that I know anyone like that) while also making use of references to Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, which Bonaduce has to do a seminar on. I liked this: it’s a book for those who understand that you don’t have to be a drooling idiot to watch hockey, and that it is actually possible to appreciate both hockey and literature.

Rating: 4.5 pucks out of 5. I thought this book was excellent and would highly recommend it!