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    The Antagonist: A Novel
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    The Antagonist: A Novel
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    The Antagonist: A Novel
    Audiobook8 hours

    The Antagonist: A Novel

    Written by Lynn Coady

    Narrated by MacLeod Andrews

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJan 22, 2013
    ISBN9780385366298
    Unavailable
    The Antagonist: A Novel
    Author

    Lynn Coady

    Lynn Coady now lives in Edmonton, though she was born and raised in Cape Breton. She has published a collection of short stories, Play the Monster Blind, and four novels. Her first novel, Strange Heaven, was nominated for the 1998 Governor General's Award for Fiction, while her latest novel, The Antagonist, was shortlisted for the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

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    Reviews for The Antagonist

    4/5

    63 ratings11 reviews

    What did you think?

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    • 4/5
      I was not sure about this book when I started to read it, it did not really appeal to me, especially when my reading club selected it as a "Hockey" book. That is really not the main theme. Once I got into it though, I could not put it down. The main character finds out as an adult,that his best friend from university, Adam, has written a book about him and he is angry and wants to set the story straight. He contacts Adam by email and facebook and begins to write his story without leaving out the important parts.

      Gordon Rankin "Rank" is the voice in this story and it is an angry one. He is an adopted boy who grows up, physically anyway, in a home with a very angry, small father. Rank is larger than any of the other boys in town and his father uses that, to the point where Rank ends up in a juvenile detention centre for a fight that gives another boy brain damage. Once out, he begins to play hockey and eventually gets a scholarship for University. He meets 3 others and they become inseparable. Rank quits the hockey team because he does not want to be the goon and the struggles of how he will be able to continue school begin. As Rank's story continues, we meet several other people from is life, how they effected him and he begins to reconcile with his past. A good read that really makes you think about how young boys are molded to fit a certain path and how that effects them for life.
    • 5/5
      I only gave this 5 stars again because there are only 5 to give. This is a very compelling book about a guy who portrayed himself as some kind of loser, found that he had all the answers. Very thought provoking and enjoyable.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed this book. I loved the writing style. I think the story moved along more quickly than some of the other reviewers. I had the sense that Rank felt trapped by his size - that it was a liability because of the expectations and prejudices that come with being big. It seems he struggled against his size.

      I liked the religious theme that ran through the book - the "randomness" of the gods.

      Overall, I thought this was a great read.
    • 4/5
      Lynn Coady is the voice inside my head, but far more eloquent. She's those glimpses of truth in life's little situations that disappear just before you see them. She's a phenomenal writer and this is a stellar book. She has a marvelous gift for stringing together the bursts of insight that neatly tie up what you were previously trying to say in no less than 35 minutes of earnest conversation.

      "It turned out that if you spent a lot of time inducing the emotion of drunkenness, the emotion of boredom would station itself just around the corner, just on the other side of sobriety, and wait - not to pounce, exactly, boredom wasn't an emotion that pounced - but to sort of collapse against you and hang on, like a girl at a party late at night."

      So that's going to be stuck in my head pretty much forever. Gushing aside, this is a great book and you should probably just go read it.
    • 4/5
      I don't think I have read any other books by Lynn Coady but if this is an example of her writing I will have to find more. She manages to convincingly write as if she was male. There have been a few books written by men about women that I thought were very well done, such as Clara Callan by Richard Wright, but none of them were written in the first person as far as I recall. This book, which is a series of emails, captures the boneheadedness of young males at university and also the mature indignation of a forty-something man.Rank has always been big. His father, owner of an ice cream shop, encouraged Rank to use his size to intimidate customers who were causing trouble. Something bad happened although we are not sure what until later in the book. We do know that Rank confessed this to his university friend, Adam, during one drunken debauch because Rank starts writing to Adam to complain that Adam has used the confession in a novel. Over the course of the summer of 2009 Rank continues to email Adam recalling their university days and the event that he divulged. Rank is interrupted for a while because he is called home to care for his father who has fallen and broken his leg. Rank and his father are not what you could call close but the father is enormously proud of Rank. When he learns Rank is writing a book (the excuse Rank gives for spending so many hours in his room on the computer) he keeps suggesting things to be added. Rank is often exasperated by his father but his father seems oblivious. That's a family dynamic that I can relate to.Rank is really a decent guy but he could have so easily turned out badly. Two people stand out for turning his life around. One was his high school hockey coach and the other was an evangelist who approached him in a bar. Without those interventions his story could have been quite different. And, possibly, Adam should be added to that list because his novel has caused Rank to re-examine his life and come to terms with it.
    • 5/5
      Great book, I could barely put it down. The story is told through a series of emails written by Rank to his former college buddy, Adam. Adam has written a book in which a character very much like Rank himself appears--without Rank's per mission or knowledge. the emails provide the background for the behavior that Adam witnessed and wrote about. Best line in the book is when Rank writes that he had the opposite of the Midas touch. instead of turning stuff to gold, he turned it into mayhem and chaos.
    • 3/5
      The Antagonist by Lynn Coady was a short listed book finalist for the prestigious Canadian Giller Prize for 2011. So, when I opened the book, I approached it as such and expected a literary eloquence in narrative, details of landscape in setting, and a myriad of complex characters in an elaborate plot that speaks to a high order of the privileged few about its philosophy on the potential downfall or evolution of society. (Insert breath, here.) Yeah, one of those books. A book that is heavier than my hand in writing this first paragraph. Because heavy-handed is not a place a writer wants to be, nor does a reader. I know. I’m both.

      So, it was much to my relief that this book surprised me (but, only after the fact, because really, I don’t like it when an author initially says in his or her writing, “Ha! And you expected Northrop Frye!”). So much for what I know.

      It’s said you “shouldn’t read a book by its cover,” but the lesson learned here, too, is you shouldn’t judge a book by its seal of award nominations – long-listed or short.

      That’s not to say it was a poorly written novel, unworthy of its shortlist Giller acclaim. It’s not. It’s a deceptively simple narrative, a confessional collection of email written by the main character, Gord Rankin Jr., also known as Rank, in response to his best friend, Adam’s book publication in which he discovers he is the star and central character.

      But, star is too kind a word for the “antagonistic” email-writer who resents being fictionalized in a novel without first granting his explicit permission, if not disclosing the full “truth” behind its story – his story. Thus, an onslaught of daily conversational rants becomes the collective essence of the book, which through its dialogue reveals the true nature of its hulking giant and his overly scrutinized temperament.

      Gord Rankin Jr., as Rank, a name he self-imposed, has but, one main identity flaw: he is big. Big for his age, bigger than his friends, and feels the pressure associated with his bulk as a weight to act out a premature manhood that he has not yet emotionally identified with, and yet has unexpectedly manifested itself in his overgrown body.

      Most pre-pubescent boys wish for such a growth spurt, rushing forward into their futures searching for elusive manhood explained to them as something innately measured by the size of their biceps, the abundance of their hair growth, their sexual promiscuity and prowess with women, and the bravado of adrenalin and aggression readily exhibited in sport. At least this is the stereotype.

      And Rank is the victim of such stereotypical branding. Unfortunately, not only is he unprepared to fully understand the magnification of his own strength, this stereotype, which trapped him as a child has also led him to its full supplication. He was simply too big in his own mind and others around him that he succumbed to living out a lifestyle that pegged him as an uneducated, muscle-bound brute.

      But, it wasn’t just size that he battled against in his upbringing. It was his own animosity towards his brash-mouthed, brazen father and the loss of his idyllic, “saintly” mother. This kind of burden coupled with a readily instilled, hot temper coupled with physical dominance is bound to erupt in some form of violence whether it be unintended or not. And the outcome can be traumatic.

      And so, it is through this therapeutic email writing that Rank slowly discloses to the reader as well as to his friend, Adam, his version of the story that has been according to Rank, superficially immortalized in a book.

      Subordinate characters in the story include a quick-tempered father, a drug-pushing thug, a judgemental constable, a college fraternity, an alcoholic bouncer, a Born-Again girlfriend, and an empathetic counsellor and hockey coach—all facets to a larger story to the bulk of Rank, himself.

      It is an easy, quick read. At times the writing is self-absorbed, but then how can it not be, considering the email writing is one-sided and self-reflected? This book is as much an internal dialogue as it is long-winded. It has to be. It’s email—in all its technological-acronym-glory of OMGs and modern, street-dialogue including the word, fuck. But, there is brash wit and a hidden intelligence in Rank’s dialogue that lets you know that he’s no “dumb jock.”

      The friendship between Adam and himself, though not fully articulated, is one of polar opposites, where Rank, the broad-shouldered, meat-eating, alcohol-partying guy finds a confidence in the quiet assurance and watchfulness of his academic peer and counterpart, Adam.

      It’s a story about strength and the lack of it; about family and friendship; and the power of the fist as much as it is about men and the fragility of their egos—as well as their hearts.

      Now, go and punch something for not buying this book sooner.

      No?

      Good.

      Better to read this book instead.
    • 3/5
      First of all, I do not consider this an epistolary novel. It is written more as angry journal entries. Gordon Rankin nicknamed Rank, whose life story was stolen and published by Adam, a former college classmate, is livid. He sends emails, though there is just a date and time and nothing about it says email. Also, Adam doesn't respond. So I take issue with it being called an epistolary novel. It is written first person, and explores Rank's life, the good and mostly bad. The spewing of anger and the very detailed entries are more for Rank to look at his life. It was well-written but very heavy and I had to stop reading it. It was too much for me though I am sure it could be appreciated by others. But just be warned, this isn't light and it is a bit slow going. It may pick up but I didn't get further than 100 pages.Sometimes a book might be great but you just can't read it. This is probably one of those books. Maybe I'll pick it back up at another time.It is hard to rate a book that is not for me so I didn't finish it, but one I think some will find quite good. So three stars.
    • 3/5
      A pilgrimage is a journey of moral or spiritual significance. It takes time, involves hardship and struggle, and constitutes a form of penance. In Lynn Coady’s intriguing novel, The Antagonist, Gordon “Rank” Rankin Jr. has set out on a pilgrimage of sorts, though a mediated one. The reader is presented with a one-sided series of emails that Rank writes and sends to a former college buddy, Adam, who years later has taken events from Rank’s life and included them in a novel. Rank is incensed at both this audacious theft of his life and the distortion he feels it has wrought on that life. His angry missives give way to increasingly elaborate accounts of his life, as Rank sets out to “correct” the story of his life that Adam has told. The details mount bit by bit such that the series of emails over the course of four months becomes a compelling autobiography in itself. Or a soul-searching memoir. Or, what is increasingly more probable, an act of penance and contrition. Whether Rank eventually reaches a holy site at the end of his pilgrimage is an open question. That his story is sufficiently gripping to hold the reader throughout its meandering self-scrutiny and petulant currents of defiance is, however, settled.Lynn Coady sets herself a challenge: how do you make the first-person narrative voice of a hulking brute of a man sufficiently engrossing without verging into stereotype or falsity? For the most part, I think she succeeds in navigating between those dangers. Rank is a complicated figure, played upon by the gods (as he thinks), oversized and at times overwrought. His journey is both personal—as he moves from self involvement to a broader perspective on his life—and literary—as he discovers the joy and danger that writing his life as a story brings forth. Coady nicely mixes Rank’s diction throughout in order to reflect his origin as well as his education. He is nearly forty at the time of taking up his cyber pilgrimage and has come a long way from the oversized youth who nearly killed an opponent with one punch in the parking lot of his father’s Icy Dream franchise.Regrettably, for me, there were two discordant notes in Coady’s otherwise finely crafted tale. First, Rank escapes his local environment by winning a hockey scholarship to university. This should have set off a red flag for her editor or publisher. There are no athletic scholarships for hockey players or any other sportsmen at Canadian universities. Second, in a key turning point in the plot, Rank makes a principled decision to quit the school’s hockey team when his coach insists, during half time, that he go out and harm players on the other team. How could such a blunder get past a Canadian editor? There is no such thing as a half time intermission in hockey; the game is divided into three periods. My suspicion is that perhaps Rank was initially written as a football player and only in a later draft converted into a hockey player. This would also explain the otherwise discordant references to him as a football player that occur from time to time. These are disappointing lapses in an otherwise compelling story.
    • 5/5
      Ms. Coady is one of Canada's premiere novelists, and that is very apparent when you read this book that was one of the finalists in the 2010 Giller Prize awards. There have been a lot of things in the news here in Canada lately about hockey enforcers and the toll it takes on their lives. This book illustrates this issue very well indeed. Rank is just that-a big, brawny guy who has been expected all his life to act as an enforcer-in hockey, in his various jobs as a young man, and in just about everything he does. This role does not sit well with him, and he spends his entire life trying to reconcile himself to this unasked-for role. And the book takes us to its inevitable conclusion-an event that rips up Gord's life and causes him to retreat within himself. The characters in this book are very memorable. We have Rank himself, and his three college friends as well as Rank's twisted and angry father. And throughout the ghost of Rank's mother whose demise almost tore Rank to pieces. As serious as this topic is, the book has hidden gems of humour buried throughout. These help to make the characters real and the story not so tragic and sad. This book is a triumph to Ms. Coady's subject and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
    • 4/5
      Gordon Rankin (aka "Rank") is nearing 40 years old when his past comes back to haunt him -- in the form of a novel written by a man he was friends 20 years ealier at University. As Rank reads the novel, he becomes angry at how he is portrayed and writes a series of e-mails to the author (Adam Grix) to set the record straight. Being a large person, Rank has been cast in the role of "enforcer" -- by his father, his hockey coach, his classmates. This leads to serious consequences when he is a young man. Rank has successfully hidden from his past for many years. This is the story of how he is confronted by it, how he reacts and, in the process, we and he get to understand him at a deeper level. Well written, fast paced with plenty of dialogue (in spite of the epistolary format). Rank is a character that shows us the challenges of being a man in today's world.