The Last Season
- Publisher
- Dundurn Press
- Initial publish date
- Nov 2012
- Category
- Sports, Literary, Small Town & Rural
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781459706866
- Publish Date
- Nov 2012
- List Price
- $21.99
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9781459706880
- Publish Date
- Nov 2012
- List Price
- $9.99
Classroom Resources
Where to buy it
Description
Now that his hockey career is ending, what will become of his life?
Felix Batterinski grew up tough in Northern Ontario where hockey was the only way out of a life of grinding poverty. He got out and enjoyed fame as a hockey "enforcer" for the Philadelphia Flyers. But fame is fleeting.
Now in his thirties and at the end of his playing career, Felix tries to make a go of it as a player-coach for a Finnish club. As the lone Canadian on the team, he is an outsider with a reputation that takes on a life of its own. When a controversial play brings his comeback bid to a screeching halt, Felix is faced with his own obsolescence and begins a tragic descent into disillusion and despair.
About the author
In the fall of 2006, Roy MacGregor, veteran newspaperman, magazine writer, and author of books, came to campus. Since 2002, MacGregor had been writing columns for the Globe and Mail, but he had a long and distinguished career in hand before he came to the national newspaper. He has won National Newspaper Awards and in 2005 was named an officer in the Order of Canada. He is the author of more than 40 books — 28 of them in the internationally successful Screech Owls mystery series for young readers — on subjects ranging from Canada, to the James Bay Cree, to hockey. That fall, he spoke to a packed room in the St. Thomas chapel. After the lecture, Herménégilde Chiasson, the Acadian poet, artist, and New Brunswick's Lieutenant Governor of the day, hosted a reception at the majestic Old Government House on the banks of the St. John River. MacGregor spent the evening surrounded by young journalists and the conversation continued late into the night. After all, there were more than three decades of stories to tell.
Editorial Reviews
"A compelling fable about violence, superstition, love and the shallowness of modern life."
Maclean's
"MacGregor's description of this rural Ontario family is reminiscent of William Faulkner's descriptions of rural Mississippi families -- the sense of foreboding, the family members bound together by dark secret, the mentally retarded relative, the clash of organized religion and the occult…. Clearly then, The Last Season is much more than a sports book."
Globe and Mail
"Superb—far better than many Governor General's Award-winning novels since."
The Toronto Star
"[The Last Season] is so rich in meaning that to call it simply a hockey novel is misleading…. In giving Canadians Felix Batterinski, Roy MacGregor has shown them a vital part of themselves."
Maclean's
"The best book of fiction on hockey."
The Edmonton Journal
“Combining entries from her grandfather’s diary with other reports and sources from the MacAlpine expedition, Karram’s book tells a tale of misadventure and recovery that is worth reading.”
Altitude magazine
"A classic Canadian novel."
Calgary Herald
"Sports literature as good as it gets."
The Vancouver Sun
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