Neglected Books

Posted 2 September, 2007 in Neglected Reads | 1 comment

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?