Cycling

By Greg Garrett

Book Overview

Brad Cannon is charming. And that's the problem. At the tender age of thirty, Brad is on the road to becoming a footnote in his own life. His professors and publishers alike have been salivating for the indifferent wunderkind's next big book, thanks in large part to the surprise Civil War bestseller he wrote while in his twenties. The problem is that he isn't writing it--not a word in five years. Instead, he chooses to spend his days biking along hot Texas roads, eating chicken-fried steak with his baseball-philosopher buddies, and courting a series of women whose lives he seems to drift in and out of like the tide. If anything gets to be too real, Brad can always hop on his bike and escape, pedaling fast past a life dotted with broken relationships, missed opportunities, and family tragedies so potent their memory still has the power to wound. It's those deeply painful losses that hide beneath Brad's Peter Pan act. But now, the years of frantic white lies are taking their toll. Brad's carefully compartmentalized life is starting to fall apart in a messy, very public way from which there's no escape. For Brad has violated his own rule--he has started to care, setting himself on a collision course with a love that could jeopardize what he's taken for granted, forcing him to fight for the very thing that could destroy him--or save him. Evoking Nick Hornby, Walker Percy, and Richard Ford--but with an affable, quirky Texas charm all his own--Greg Garrett has created a masterful meditation on love and loss, sorrow and survival--a heart-wrenching ride toward the tiny, tenuous connections that hold the promise of redemption.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1500100439
• ISBN13: 9781500100438
• Release Date: June 2015
• Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 324 Pages
• Weight: 0.96 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Almost Excellent - But not much to do with Bicycling

I am a cyclist. Not a serious cyclist, but a road cyclist nonetheless, and I can certainly understand how some cyclists may feel misled by the title. Yeah, he rides around on his bike a lot but his bicycling serves as a backdrop for the story and not a centerpiece and especially since the photo on the cover shows a silhouette of a person with a bike on his shoulder, one may think bicycling is more prominent and intrinsic to the story. It is not. It is very well written. Not great, but the author has potential to be great. It is a slow read. At least for me. And the arc of the story is not great. More of a character study than a story. He does "cycle" through women. I think by the end of page 80 or so he has bedded more women than I have in my life. (which is not saying much) As said by a negative review above "Cycling through women?". Indeed. This story contains some similarities to Michael Magnuson's "Heft On Wheels", depressed, university lecturer/teacher, sometime author, underachiever-type, many events pertaining to life in the faculty. I sometimes wondered whose book came out first and if the second author used the first as a template. Garrett's writing is far superior but much more depressing. I would like to comment a bit about the story and you may avert your eyes if you don't want it spoiled: His family is killed in an accident while he is a child, as a teenager he is in love with a girl and while making out at lovers lane, she is apprehended and raped and murdered. He is plagued by the vision of the assailants vehicle in his dreams. My thought is that he victimizes/damages women's psyches in a fashion after the way his psyche has been damaged. The black car of his nightmares is him at the wheel perpetuating the "cycle" of the damage that has been wrought on him.

An Excellent Book

Garrett has an eye and an ear for authentic Texas. The story is told with great depth by a flawed but charming narrator, a man who unflinchingly shows us his heart, even when he doesn't understand its longings himself. A really wonderful book.

Cycling's a joyride.

Cycling stands as an inventive -- at times gripping -- ride, and is one of the few books that this reviewer has ever devoured in a single sitting.Garrett's brand of literary realism offers crisp details -- the barking dogs lurching at a blur of bicycle spokes, the Mexican Coca Colas Hector Portillo sells in his midtown store, the levity and gravity found amidst friends wrangling 900 pounds of dry-weight concrete, and a defunct East Waco soul food café called Martha's -- through all this he allows his characters to find their skin within his photorealistic microcosm. Throughout the narrative, the shifting weather patterns (important for any cyclist) punctuate the story's trajectory. Overheard songs conspire to comment on the character's emotions and actions like a transistored Greek chorus. The characters that interact with Cannon are birthed from a rich intersection of genteel Southern life, Western American culture, and a Baptist/Christian subculture that is so much a part of Waco. Even "bit characters" are presented in such a way that you believe each one has their own novel waiting to be excavated.In the end, Cycling conveys an unmistakable (yet complex) grace, much like the final scenes Garrett's first novel, Free Bird.

Excellent!

If you enjoy a story with characters that are flawed but real, and who grow and change, then you'll enjoy Cycling. With humor and consideration for his characters, Greg Garrett makes this slice of fictional "real life" very believable. I wanted to know what was going to happen -- it's real storytelling.Highly recommended!

Bravo!

This is a wonderful book! If you ever attended Baylor University, lived in Central Texas, rode a bike, or were related to a tormented writer you should order this book now. Brad Cannon along with his friends, lovers, and colleagues weave together a story that is as satisfying as a Big O at Georges (a waco greasy spoon that serves a large cold beer). The Waco Chamber of Commerce should buy these books in bulk and give them away by the dozens - it paints a picture of a friendly college town that seems to be ignored in the media frenzy of Dennehy or Koresh.Garrett has an unmistakable gift in telling real and powerful stories, I give it two thumbs up!