Mount Appetite
From AwardAnnals
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| Author(s) | Bill Gaston |
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| Publisher | Raincoast Books |
| Honors | |
| Mount Appetite presents 12 vibrant, intensely human tales of desire and alienation.
“Everyone at the top of Mt. Appetite is as close as they can get to heaven. It’s work to get there and agony to be denied.” Whether a salmon researcher, professional taster, illiterate faith healer, or Malcolm Lowry’s illegitimate son, the protagonists in these sly and witty stories have all climbed the mountain, and all share a restless, relentless longing that they struggle to satiate through alcohol, drugs, sex, or schemes of the heart. Bill Gaston, author of the… | |
Mount Appetite presents 12 vibrant, intensely human tales of desire and alienation.
“Everyone at the top of Mt. Appetite is as close as they can get to heaven. It’s work to get there and agony to be denied.” Whether a salmon researcher, professional taster, illiterate faith healer, or Malcolm Lowry’s illegitimate son, the protagonists in these sly and witty stories have all climbed the mountain, and all share a restless, relentless longing that they struggle to satiate through alcohol, drugs, sex, or schemes of the heart.
Bill Gaston, author of the critically acclaimed The Good Body, evinces a remarkable dexterity of voice as he moves effortlessly among his colorful cast of characters, drawing the junkie with the same skill and compassion as the teenaged 7-11 clerk. Grotesque, unsettling, and oddly tender, Mount Appetite is short fiction at its finest.
Honors
Reviews
Amazon.com
Mount Appetite, Bill Gaston’s fourth collection of short fiction, is a deliciously carnal little book, full of tugging, teasing desire and the occasional moment of satiation. It isn’t a sex book, and Gaston is neither an Irving Layton in prose nor a Canadian Nicholson Baker, but it is nonetheless a compelling dissertation on the psychology of the flesh.
Gaston’s stories are fresh, strange, and filled with the strain of melancholic levity that is common in Hank Williams songs but scarce in literary fiction. Matt Cohen fans will love these stories, as will anyone looking for a dozen startlingly original plots that seamlessly mingle the sublime and the mundane. In “Driving Under the Influence,” a broken-hearted drunk driver, accompanied only by his dog, Spatula, traverses an impaired driving roadblock again and again, mesmerized by a beautiful policewoman. “A Forest Path” reappraises Malcolm Lowry’s time in British Columbia through the voice of his embittered illegitimate son, while “The Alcoholist” concerns the last moments of Lyle Van Luven, the most delicate of professional tasters. This is, appropriately enough, addictive writing, and readers new to Gaston may find themselves in grave danger of getting hooked. —Jack Illingworth
