Seven Good Reasons Not to Be Good opens with a postcard from forty-something Matt to his oldest friend Zane. Zane is dying, but maybe he doesn’t need to be. Matt has to do something about it. And that’s not Matt’s only problem. His father is disappearing into dementia and his marriage is in tatters. It seems the oft-postponed trip from Vancouver to Toronto is now critical—if Matt is to save his friend, say goodbye to his father and perhaps find something of himself he lost so long ago.

In Seven Good Reasons Not to Be Good, John Gould treats mortality, morality and modernity with equal measures of reverence, wit and sympathy.

John Gould is the author of The End of Me – a collection of 56 sudden stories about mortality – and of two previous collections in the same form, including Kilter, a finalist for the Giller prize. He’s also written a novel, Seven Good Reasons Not To Be Good, and published fiction in periodicals across Canada and abroad. As an arts administrator he created and coordinated writing programs for the BC Festival of the Arts and the Victoria School of Writing, and was a member of the collective that founded the Victoria Writers Festival. A freelance editor and nonfiction writer, he served on the editorial board of the Malahat Review, and taught creative writing at the University of Victoria. He lives on unceded Lekwungen territory in Victoria, BC. Website: johngould.ca.

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