Gilbert Gronsky has taken up writing late in life and decides in 2021 to spread his writerly wings and enter a three-day novel contest over the Labour Day Weekend. As he writes his 'novella,' a mystery, his life alternates between emerging mini-chapters, minor interruptions, his passion for the US Open tennis tournament, his lover, his friend, and, at one point, a shocker of a visitor in his garage.
In November, Gronsky fashions a more complex crime novel set in post-war Canada, 1946-48. As he writes, he is occupied by a plethora of larger world actions including extreme weather events, COP 26, Haiti missionary kidnappings, love, food, and Covid.
And, of course, tennis wherever it pops up on television.
"The Life of Gronsky is a funny, engrossing, and compelling story about a character you'll remember long after you've finished this book. Masterfully weaving stories within stories, Bill Engleson takes readers on a memorable journey. The pages practically turned themselves." ---Terry Fallis, two-time winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour.
"Bill Engleson's Gronsky labours over his novels, unspooling multiple mysteries as he struggles with his past. What can he count on besides tennis, and COP 26? Memories? Nope. His life is a Krapp's Last Layer Cake - disturbances infect the present and will surely distort his future. Forget about control; everywhere he looks there is slippage. He only has certainty over his fictions and meanwhile he's blowing in the wind, and so are we. Ultimately when we look at Gronsky, we're staring into a mirror." ---Stephen Miller, Canadian and American screenwriter, novelist, and actor based in Vancouver, B.C.
"Any writer will sympathize with Gilbert Gronsky 's challenges with a three-day novel contest and National Novel Writing Month. If only his work wasn't interrupted by sports coverage, world events, issues with his neighbours, and the mystery of what happened to his own family. Bill Engleson's The Life of Gronsky is an entertaining romp, interspersed with thoughts on the world and excerpts of the crime fiction Gronsky is creating." ---Merrilee Robson, author of short crime fiction and Murder is Uncooperative.
