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From Publishers WeeklyFrench-Canadian Courtemanche opens his flawed second novel (after Sunday at the Pool in Kigali) with a vivid portrait of the narrator's father at dinner with his large family on Christmas Eve struck dumb and feeble by rigid Parkinson's and stuffing himself with food. André, the narrator and eldest child, confesses he has never loved his father, a tyrant he unabashedly compares to Stalin. Flashbacks reveal a violent and domineering but insecure man who jealously once claimed the prize-winning walleye André caught in a fishing competition. As the evening progresses, André concludes that his father is better off dead, but it is impossible to tell whether the idea of patricide by gourmandism, proposed as a joke that ultimately becomes part of a plan, springs from a benevolent change of heart or from Oedipal rage. The story plays out mostly in André's head, through summary and analysis rather than drama, and the lusty, repellent father is the only character who truly comes alive on the page as the novel heads toward its shocking conclusion. (Sept.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Product DescriptionOn Christmas Eve, a family has gathered around the table for the obligatory dinner. The father, once an imposing figure who terrorized his children, has suddenly fallen prey to Parkinson’s. Yesterday’s tyrant is now trapped inside a disintegrating body. André, the eldest child, is nearing 60. He has never loved the father who lied too much, abused too much, manipulated too much. But still, this holiday week, André cannot help but be moved. How should he behave toward a parent to whom all pleasures are forbidden? Should he struggle to prolong the old man’s life, or help him end it? Around the dinner table, opinions are divided. At once intimate and universal, A Good Death is a deeply moving voyage into the essence of humanity. In it, Gil Courtemanche once again asks readers to confront the question that lay at the heart of his first novel: Why live? Why die?Pages of A Good Death :
