Neglected Books

Posted 2 September, 2007 in Neglected Reads |

Over at the Guardian, there is a list (part two is here) of novelists’ choices of books they feel have been neglected, underrated, or underappreciated. I’m cheered to see two personal favourites — Alisdair Grey’s Lanark and Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find — on the list, although I’m not sure that O’Connor has been exactly neglected, at least by the literary community. Or maybe it’s just that she’s a writer’s writer.

In any event, I found this article entertaining, and am particularly cheered to see it online. One of the noted advantages that bloggers have over traditional print journalists is their ability to focus on books and authors that have been unfairly passed over, since we are not beholden to advertisers or to any artificially imposed directive to remain current.

Accordingly, and encouraged by the Guardian’s list, I would like to put in my two cents’ worth on behalf of Bill Gaston’s novel The Good Body. Gaston is one of the unsung heroes of Canadian literature, and I think The Good Body is his finest novel to date. It tells the story of a hockey player who never quite made pro, who has found out as the book opens that he has multiple sclerosis, which will inevitably destroy his body. He decides to enroll in an English course at his son’s university, so that he can play hockey on his son’s team before his body completely gives out on him. The novel is funny and sad and knowing, and has lines of such crystalline purity that reading them reminded me of all the reasons I started reading fiction in the first place. I adore this novel, and can’t say enough in its favour.

So. That’s my choice for a neglected book. Yours?

2 comments to “Neglected Books”

May, September 3rd, 2007 at 12:40 pm:

• I find that all the novels by Nathanael West haven’t received the attention that they deserved. If I were to pick one, among the few he had the time to write before his premature death at thirty-seven, I would choose “The Day of the Locust” for its powerful and expressive narration.

Valerie, July 1st, 2008 at 1:38 pm:

• I would like to nominate Graham Greene’s “Loser Takes All” which sees a newly wed couple attempt to find their fortune in the shoddy casino of an unnamed French town. Soon the success catches up with them and the distraction of money and the omnipresent potential for more, more, more drives them away from each other. Greene’s writing is never anything less than fantastic and this is one of his lesser-known, but most tender novels. He writes the dialogue between man and woman in a warm and honest fashion while making the reader giggle at the characters that surround them. The narration from the man’s point of view gives both sentimental reflections upon marriage as well as cynical and I could lap up his succinct descriptions for days.

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