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The Antagonist, by Lynn Coady
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A piercing epistolary novel, The Antagonist explores, with wit and compassion, how the impressions of others shape, pervert, and flummox both our perceptions of ourselves and our very nature.
Gordon Rankin Jr., aka “Rank,” thinks of himself as “King Midas in reverse”—and indeed misfortune seems to follow him at every turn. Against his will and his nature, he has long been considered—given his enormous size and strength—a goon and enforcer by his classmates, by his hockey coaches, and, not least, by his “tiny, angry” father. He gamely lives up to their expectations, until a vicious twist of fate forces him to flee underground. Now pushing forty, he discovers that an old, trusted friend from his college days has published a novel that borrows freely from the traumatic events of Rank’s own life. Outraged by this betrayal and feeling cruelly misrepresented, he bashes out his own version of his story in a barrage of e-mails to the novelist that range from funny to furious to heartbreaking.
With The Antagonist, Lynn Coady demonstrates all of the gifts that have made her one of Canada’s most respected young writers. Here she gives us an astonishing story of sons and fathers and mothers, of the rewards and betrayals of male friendship, and a large-spirited, hilarious, and exhilarating portrait of a man tearing his life apart in order to put himself back together.
- Sales Rank: #590237 in Books
- Published on: 2013-01-22
- Released on: 2013-01-22
- Format: Deckle Edge
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.50" h x 1.25" w x 6.61" l, 1.21 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 304 pages
From Booklist
Forty-year-old Gordon “Rank” Rankin discovers that a close friend from university days has used him as a primary character in a novel. Infuriated by Adam’s portrayal of him as a teenager, Rank begins to blister Adam with angry e-mails to set the record straight and, ultimately, to come to terms with Ranks own deeply conflicted feelings about himself and his life. Coady, 28, is a rising star in Canadian fiction, and she has turned the very neat trick of engagingly, entertainingly, and insightfully examining the predicament of a boy of 14 (the young Rank) whose growth spurt unexpectedly places him in a large, powerful man’s body. Suddenly, Rank looks dangerous, and people, including his splenetic father and, later, his university hockey coach, want to make him their “enforcer,” a role Rank doesn’t want to play. His e-mails evolve from clumsy rages to thoughtful, measured ruminations on crucial events in his life, and he becomes a genuinely fascinating character. But it is Coady’s ability to realistically portray Rank’s teens and university years and empathically conduct his search for self that makes The Antagonist more than just entertainment. It’s deservedly long-listed for Canada’s prestigious Scotiabank Giller Prize. --Thomas Gaughan
Review
“Only a writer as wonderfully gifted as Lynn Coady could elicit such extraordinary sympathy for a man as full of self-destructive rage as Rank, her main character. You won't soon forget either him or this haunting novel.” —Richard Russo
“Coady’s fluency in the language of the college boy [is] impressive, [as is] her feel for the camaraderie that is inseperable from rivalry and masculine aggression.” —The New Yorker
“Dear Lynn Coady: As I said, I love your new book, with its unsettling mixture of comedy and pathos…incredibly funny, sarcastic and profane, right up till the moment when the tragedy below the surface suddenly erupts…. It’s an extraordinarily clever and sympathetic exploration of the cross-currents of male friendship, the intense relationships we make and abandon in school. How ill-fitting those intimacies feel years later whenever a college reunion or some chance encounter forces us to try them on again.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post
“A self-justification fueled by rage ends as an endearing journey of self-discovery… Nominated for Canada’s Giller Prize, this very human drama, laced with humor and insight, is strongly recommended.” —Barbara Love, Library Journal
“A dramatic and funny confessional in reverse.” —Marie Claire
“A genuinely fascinating character [whose] emails evolve from clumsy rages to thoughtful, measured ruminations on crucial events in his life….But it is Coady’s ability to realistically portray his teens and university years and empathetically conduct his search for self that makes The Antagonist more than just engertainment.” —Booklist
“Smartly tuned and as unsettling as it intends to be…. Coady expertly renders a man who's compelled to address his past but not entirely ready to look in the mirror [and her novel] is a caution to tread carefully.” —Kirkus
“Coady is an ambitious writer, exploring themes of masculinity, religion, and the perils and promise of the fictional enterprise, and her decision to write from the male perspective is brave and successful….The pathos and humor brought to a challenging life story will appeal to many readers.” —Publishers Weekly
About the Author
Lynn Coady is an award-winning writer, editor, and journalist. She was born on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia and now lives in Edmonton, Alberta. She is the author of Mean Boy, Play the Monster Blind, Saints of Big Harbour, and Strange Heaven.
Most helpful customer reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
A real slapshot
By mateo52
Just imagine yourself scrolling through the literary fiction titles on Amazon, or perusing the racks at a B&N - if one of the outlets remains open in your community - and coming across a new release written by a ghost from your past. Checking out the back cover photo, you discover although the years have engorged your old pal with a little extra girth, there is no doubt the author is your former classmate and as luck would have it, past confidant. Scanning through it, you rapidly realize while your friend may have the privilege of authorial license there is little question it is essentially an uncomplimentary roman à clef based on his perceptions of you. I don't know about the next guy, but I know in my case impassioned or antagonistic might be among the tepid descriptions of my emotional reactions, although who really deserves the attribution of antagonist might be debatable.
Thirty-eight year old ex- college hockey player Gordon "Rank" Rankin, Jr. finds himself in a comparable state as a chance encounter with another former classmate puts him on the path to discovery of a novel penned by Adam Grix, who we eventually come to understand was easily his closest friend during their first two years of college...or university since we're talking about Canada here. The plot of Adam's novel is never explained but based on Rank's reaction, it's evident thematically he was the inspiration for one of the major characters. He decides to reestablish contact with his old buddy via Facebook where nearly all authors with an ego (and let's be real here, name one that hasn't) have created pages in anticipation of effusive, complimentary messages from adoring fans and see if Adam, who we will discover as the story plays out may or may not have been precisely the introverted bookish, manipulative weasel Rank first presaged him to be amongst their college fraternal quartet of friends, is willing to take a look at a little piece Rank claims to have written.
But, as envisioned by author Lynn Coady in a variation of the epistolary form employing emails as his communicative connection, Rank's true objective is to set the record straight while secondarily launching some vitriolic missives aimed at his `ole buddy,' with his father often the victim of collateral damage. As a result, his emails over the course of one summer are equally haphazardly submitted and entirely unanswered by his presumptive correspondent. His messages are expansive in context and tone, periodically rambling and discomforting yet deceptively cogent and coherent when evaluated over the course of the book.
Rank is resigned to taking personal inventory, addressing and answering the questions about ourselves we seldom want to examine; acknowledging his reluctant outward acceptance of the role of man-child thrust upon him by nearly all external interactions due to his early physical maturation whilst emotionally and psychologically his genuine aspirations were to follow a very different path. Author Coady imbues him with first rate cynical abilities which he aims at himself and his recollections of most of the other characters he refers to in his emails.
The narration of the book reminded me of Russian nesting dolls as within the body of the emails, the narrative migrated between third, first and at times, second person. The emails commenced with the feel of merely another tale of college excesses related by an omniscient observer. The absolute beauty of it is how Coady integrates and actually highlights the transitions of narration to the point of pulling back the barrier to the fourth wall.
As it is Rank's rebuttal and with the confrontational nature at the outset, what he thought would be his retaliatory foray against what he intuitively believed to be a violation of an implicit trust, only a few of the characters alluded to are fully developed or did I feel they needed to be. I felt like I knew of and had had personal experiences with every single character in this book: Rank's friends, his parents, the girlfriend he only talks of reluctantly, the morally principled social worker/hockey coach, the hometown reprobates, the detritus at the college townie bar and most vividly, Rank, himself. As he begins to lose sight of his original intent - if he ever had a cogent vision of it -he does begin to compose a novel or at more appropriately, his memoir, an exsanguination obviously a long time coming.
The result is an exemplary novel by Lynn Coady who deserves all of the accolades she has received and certainly wider readership.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Stealing a life (4.5 stars)
By TChris
The Antagonist is based on an intriguing premise: How would you react if you recognized yourself as a character in a book that someone you know has authored? "There he was, the character I knew to be me, lumbering in and out of scenes, and I'd be outraged when he was like me, -- because that was stealing, -- and outraged when he wasn't, -- because that was lying."
First published in Canada in 2011, The Antagonist is written as a series of autobiographical emails from Rank to Adam. Unhappy that Adam's novel depicts him as an "innate criminal" -- Adam, according to Rank, is "vampiring the good and the real out of people's lives" -- Rank, approaching forty, decides to tell his own story, in which Adam plays a prominent and unflattering role.
Rank's story starts with Gord, his embittered father, who, as a matter of pride, unwisely invested in an Icy Dream franchise instead of a Java Joe's. Gord's efforts to make a living are hampered by his desire to banish punks (i.e., teenagers) from the restaurant. Rank's father has anger management issues, unlike his mother, who died when Rank was sixteen and remains perfect in his memory. The circumstances of that death, revealed late in the novel, have a profound impact on Rank, and he is particularly enraged that Adam's novel reduced his mother to nothingness with an off-handed comment about her death.
After Rank has a growth spurt at fourteen, most people regard him both as a man and a thug, while his father delightfully assigns him to work as a bouncer at Icy Dream. Based on a punch to the face that leaves a punk brain damaged, Rank finds himself in juvenile court -- and Adam finds a character he can paint as a criminal. That act of violence becomes a defining moment in Rank's life -- he can't read T.S. Eliot without being reminded of it -- making it easy to understand why Rank is upset to see it glorified in Adam's novel.
Much of the novel is about Rank's relationship with three friends (including Adam) during his college years. Adam and his dope smoking friends, the reader suspects, become Rank's replacement for hockey (a scholarship sport until he walked away from it), his connection to something larger, and Adam becomes his silent confidante, always listening but never sharing. Of course, confiding in Adam is what produces the series of emails that Rank spews forth after he reads Adam's book.
Telling his story gives Rank a chance to explore his first serious romance and to search for his former girlfriend (who was, at the time, a devout evangelist) on Facebook. It gives him the opportunity to better understand his self-centered friend Kyle, as well as Rank's acerbic father, for whom he is now caring. It makes him come to terms with the unintended consequences of two violent events in his life, with his mother's death, and with his own mortality. Finally, having blown off steam, it gives him a chance to consider whether Adam's book is, in the grand scheme of things, all that meaningful.
The Antagonist has some features of a coming-of-age novel, although the moral growth and character changes that are so much a part of that genre are muted. To the extent that Rank changes, it is in reaction to the process of reflection as he authors his emails. Maybe it would be best to describe The Antagonist as a coming-of-age-in-middle-age novel, although what Rank experiences is more catharsis than maturation.
However the novel might be categorized, it is a sensitive and insightful examination of what it means to a child in an adult's body, a person who is instantly regarded as a brawler because he looks like one, a kid who never has to grow up because, from the age of fourteen, he's living in an adult body and is treated accordingly. Lynn Coady explores the role that expectations play in shaping a young adult's life, and the difficult road a young adult must follow if he chooses to resist those expectations.
The Antagonist is written in energetic prose that reflects Rank's desire to unleash his anger and frustration. It's a powerful story but one that is rich with humor and compassion. If I could, I would give The Antagonist 4 1/2 stars.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
The Antagonist
By Brendan Moody
Lynn Coady's new novel has a neat premise. Gordon Rankin Jr, known as Rank, was horrified to discover himself fictionalized in a novel by an old college friend, so he's decided to send that old friend an insistent series of e-mails in which he'll tell the real story that Adam Grix left out. The issues of writerly ethics that this brings up are complicated and important, but Coady is less interested in them than in Rank's tragic story and his defiant, mocking, yet yearning voice. The epistolary format fades pretty quickly into the background, and deservedly so, as it's a little hard to believe that someone with Rank's educational history would write the way he does. What's never hard to believe, though, are Coady's pitch-perfect portrayals of the key relationships in Rank's life: with his domineering, cantankerous father Gord, and with Adam and the other members of their social circle. She has a keen eye for how fathers and sons can be just the right combination of alike and different to get on each other's nerves, and for how certain young men bond and express emotional ups and downs indirectly without abandoning the immature, "masculine" behavior that leads some to imagine they don't have emotional lives. Add in a sharp sense of humor, and you get a vivid, thoroughly enjoyable portrait of the forces that shaped one early twenty-first century man, and the degree to which he has or has not escaped them. THE ANTAGONIST is a small masterpiece of character study.
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