Bob Loose Bonaduce is a hockey player who never quite made it to the big time. Now he's decided to retire and return to his home province of New Brunswick. Once there, he lies his way into graduate school and attempts to get close to the son he abandoned twenty years earlier. At the same time he has to deal with the fact that he is stricken with multiple sclerosis and may eventually lose control over the body that has taken him so far in life. Some strong language.
Stories crafted around the idea of the gargoyle - the concrete representation of extremes of human emotions; the physical manifestations of the disfigurements and contortions to which human beings subject themselves. Each story has a strange and unique gargoyle guardian spirit whose sometimes benevolent, sometimes malevolent, presence informs the characters and their actions.
Twelve short stories, liked by the "Mount Appetite" of the title: the common theme of yearning and seeking, often involving addiction to substances, people, and schemes of the heart. The protagonists struggle to satiate their desires by indulging in alcohol and other vices, or, alternatively, scorning those who do. Characters range from an illiterate faith healer in New Brunswick to the articulate and illegitimate son of author Malcolm Lowry in BC.
In this quirky collection of stories we see the world through the prism of unfamiliar perspectives: a bank executive whose excellent sex life might in fact be killing her, an amorous tree surgeon better attuned to the values of his “patients” than to other people, a vacationing schizophrenic wary of his housemates, a pizza-delivery boy convinced he’s witnessed magic- all of them struggling with the world as they see it.
Sexe, drogue, alcool, argent, travail, amour... Les personnages excentriques et colorés de ces douze nouvelles sont tous des affamés de plaisirs. S'ils se laissent parfois emporter par la démesure de leurs appétits, c'est dans l'espoir d'assouvir leurs soifs et d'atteindre une sorte de paix où tout désir serait enfin comblé. Avec subtilité et une rare puissance d'évocation, Bill Gaston explore dans ces histoires imprévisibles, hallucinantes parfois, les facettes troubles des désirs et des passions.
Une actrice meurt sur un plateau de tournage. Accident ou meurtre en direct ? Cinéma vérité ou cinéma mensonge ? Francis, le cameraman qui a filmé la scène, veut comprendre ce qui s'est réellement passé.
