Choke Hold

I enjoyed this story a lot Odd, that I read this book, published in 2000, within a few weeks of having read D.M Wilson s recently released book of short stories, Once You Break A Knuckle They have similar themes, what it means to be a man, growing up to be a man Usually I lean towards books written by women and enjoy finding myself, as a Canadian woman, within their pages.But in these two books, while I do find myself, it is only on the periphery I am the Ellie or the Diane, the wife or sister, [...]

This is Todd Babiak s first novel and the third one I ve read I started with his second, then read his third and finally went back to the first A roundabout journey but rewarding Todd s writing is all about place, about home and people s lives in that sense of place When an author writes of your place, of a place you once called home, the attraction can be magnetic For people raised in New York City, London, or any large metropolitan area, finding books about the city and people is relatively ea [...]

Well written just not my type of book Certain parts didn t ring true to me, seeming to be included for the shock factor instead of plot This may have been intentional, but for me was unfavourable and distracting.The book is obviously set in Leduc, though the town is renamed Seymour The only difference is that you cannot see the mountains from the real Leduc The name of the hockey teams, businesses, streets, buildings, etc, are the same, though I haven t run into very many books set in Alberta an [...]

Interesting book I liked his Book of Stanley much better.

I enjoyed the strong sense of place, but I found Jeremy really hard to relate to.