I Hate Hockey
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1.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
“I hate hockey!” is the first and last sentence in this novel that offers a great take on our love-hate relationship with sports, be it hockey, football, soccer or baseball. Narrator Antoine Vachon blames the game for killing his marriage with his beautiful ex-wife (well, that and the power outage that brought her home unexpectedly to find him in bed with her intern). But hockey is a pretext for unlikely adventure in this sardonic roman noir that at times flirts with the outrageous.
Antoine is a total loser living in a pitiful bachelor apartment after he has lost his wife and his job as a car salesman. When his son’s hockey coach is found dead, he is browbeaten into coaching the team for one night only. He makes it through the game (to great comic effect), but things take a turn for the worse when the team bus stops at a motel after the game. Who killed the former coach and why? Was Antoine’s son involved? Or his ex-wife? The late coach was close to his players, perhaps too close… And why is Antoine unable to communicate with his son? François Barcelo’s humour and brilliant story telling is finally available in English. I Hate Hockey reads quickly, but is meticulously stitched together. Though subtle signposts are present throughout, every development comes as a total surprise.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Though this novella was originally published in French in 2011, McCambridge's excellent translation retains the prolific Quebecois author's tight narrative and biting voice in his tragicomic English-language debut. The last thing divorced dad Antoine Vachon wants to do is fill in as a one-night-only substitute coach for his son's hockey team. After all, Vachon hates hockey. But after the original coach is found dead under mysterious circumstances, the president of Quebec's Saint-Z phyrin Sports Association talks him into taking the temporary position. Thus begins a warped 24-hour odyssey during which Vachon barely survives the game, discovers a sinister secret about the dead coach, suspects his son of murder, and briefly reunites with his former wife. A self-acknowledged bigot who slept with his ex's intern (ending his marriage) and contemplates the pros and cons of receiving oral sex from a teenage boy at a motel after the game, Vachon doesn't endear himself to readers, but his constant over-thinking renders him a sympathetic character. Though the gruesome ending isn't as surprising as it was perhaps intended to be, Barcelo's brief and provocative novel is no-doubt powerful.
