Adam's Updates

"I stayed up late reading this one, and just started an immediate reread. The main character's narrative voice is spot on, and the story rolls along with a glorious inevitability. I was captured, from the moment Mike, big, thirty-year-old defenseman enforcer on the Oilers, thinks "No, bad rookie!" at Liam, eighteen-year-old five-foot-eight talented center who is making it clear that what he wants most off the ice is Mike. There is humor and heat, understated love and pain, from the first meeting of veteran and rookie to the slow, wonderful, bittersweet ending.

Mike knows that Liam isn't right for him - too young, too innocent, too enthusiastic, and too talented to stay for long. Mike shouldn't put his hands on him. But Liam pushes and wheedles and pouts, and Mike doesn't actually want to say no. He's twice Liam's size. If he wanted to make his No stick, he could. Instead, he'll take what he can get, for however long it lasts, but he won't let Liam turn it into more than it is. No more than two guys having a good time together. Even if he hasn't looked at anyone else since the brash rookie walked into his personal space and refused to go.

This book follows these two men over many years, over Mike's fumbling attempts to do the right thing, and the slow build of a relationship that will last. Over Liam's journey from enthusiastic teenager to a strong adult man. Over the highs and lows of a life in professional sports. There are joys, and there is real sadness, all vivid despite (or perhaps because of) Mike's expletive-laden stoic understatement.

And as we reach the end, we're also asked to think about the toll that sports can take on the people who play them for our entertainment. It's not an easy topic to get a grip on, and of course it sits amid a wider topic of what responsibility we have to those who make our lives easier. From the slave and child labor that produces much of our big-brand chocolate, to the boxers whose job it is to entertain us by getting repeated, concussive head injuries, our fun comes on the back of risk and trauma to others.

So how do we mitigate harm? How far should we go? Football players get post-traumatic brain injury disorders at a high rate, with sometimes devastating consequences. We could make football into flag-football and eliminate almost all head trauma, at the price of changing the sport, and probably causing unemployment for 95% of today's players as the talent needed changes. We could outlaw quad jumps in figure skating and significantly reduce compression spinal fractures in male skaters.

Who makes that call? Should the players themselves decide on safety rules? If safety rules change the talent needed to succeed (eg. fast football players instead of big football players) would current players ever vote themselves out of a job? At the pro level, our male major sports stars are well paid for the risks they take - is that enough justification, or does the lure of a lift out of poverty induce kids at the lower levels to take on risks they shouldn't face, grabbing for that gold ring?

You don't have to work through those philosophical issues to enjoy this story. You can just take this slow ride along with Mike, loving the man and the way he faces the good and the bad as it comes to him. You can take the little fist to the heart at the end, and come out saying the love was worth the pain.

But the book ends with that difficult question, and it's worth some thought."