Seven Good Reasons Not to Be Good opens with a cryptic postcard from forty-something Matt to his oldest friend, Zane. Zane is dying — for “good” — but Matt’s heading home to talk him out of it. Matt’s keen to make contact with his father too, before the old man disappears into the colourful world of his dementia, with its aliens and their crop-circle messages. With Matt’s marriage in tatters (he’s been cuckolded by the neighbourhood barista) and his career as a movie critic gone sideways, it’s clearly time for this trip from Vancouver to Toronto — so he can save his friend, wave off his dad, and maybe find something of himself he lost long ago.
In Seven Good Reasons Not to Be Good, John Gould treats mortality, morality, and modernity with equal parts empathy and wit in the manner of Jonathan Letham and Zadie Smith. His prose dazzles even as it reveals this novel’s complex heart: the imperfect art of letting go.
Seven Good Reasons Not to Be Good opens with a cryptic postcard from forty-something Matt to his oldest friend, Zane. Zane is dying — for “good” — but Matt’s heading home to talk him out of it. Matt’s keen to make contact with his father too, before the old man disappears into the colourful world of his dementia, with its aliens and their crop-circle messages. With Matt’s marriage in tatters (he’s been cuckolded by the neighbourhood barista) and his career as a movie critic gone sideways, it’s clearly time for this trip from Vancouver to Toronto — so he can save his friend, wave off his dad, and maybe find something of himself he lost long ago.
In Seven Good Reasons Not to Be Good, John Gould treats mortality, morality, and modernity with equal parts empathy and wit in the manner of Jonathan Letham and Zadie Smith. His prose dazzles even as it reveals this novel’s complex heart: the imperfect art of letting go.