The Antagonist

With towering wit and compassion, one of Canada's most exciting writers gives us a modern-day epistolary novel that explores how the impressions of others shape, pervert, and flummox our perceptions of ourselves. "By turns angry, funny, tender, and sad [with] all the gifts of storytelling on display." --Toronto Globe and Mail

Gordon Rankin, Jr., aka "Rank," thinks of himself as "King Midas in reverse"--and indeed tragedy 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 an enforcer by his classmates, by his hockey coaches and, not least, by his "tiny, angry" father. He gamely lives up to their expectations, until he ultimately is tricked again by fate and forced to flee underground. Now, pushing forty, he discovers that an old college friend has published a novel that borrows freely from the events of his life. Feeling cruelly misrepresented, Rank responds by providing his own version in a book-length series of emails to his former friend that range from funny to furious to heartbreaking. With this novel, Lynn Coady gives us a 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.