ATKINSON, Jay 1957-

PERSONAL: Born 1957. Education: Methuen High School, Methuen, MA, 1975; University of Florida, M.F.A., 1982.

ADDRESSES: Home—7 Cochrane Street, Methuen, MA 01844-3142. Office—Salem State College, 352 Lafayette Street, Salem, MA 01970.

CAREER: Salem State College, Salem, MA, professor of creative writing.

AWARDS, HONORS: Fiction award, Boston magazine; Pushcart Prize nominee; Notable Book of the Year, Publishers Weekly, 2001, for Ice Time: A Tale of Fathers, Sons, and Hometown Heroes.

WRITINGS:

Caveman Politics, Breakaway Books (Halcottsville, NY), 1997.

Ice Time: A Tale of Fathers, Sons, and HometownHeroes, Crown Publishing Group (New York, NY), 2001.

Also writes for various magazines and newspapers, including Men's Health, Boston Globe, Boston Herald, and the New York Times.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A historical novel set in a mill in Lawrence, Massachusetts; Private Investigator: A Year on the Street about the life of a private eye at Boston's McCain Investigations, for Crown (New York, NY).

SIDELIGHTS: Jay Atkinson, whose work has been syndicated in many national magazines and newspapers, has published two vastly different books. His first, the novel Caveman Politics, explores issues of race, justice, and self-examination. Ice Time: A Tale of Fathers, Sons, and Hometown Heroes, however, is Atkinson's memoir about the season he spent coaching his old high school's hockey team.

Caveman Politics is narrated by Joe Dolan, a Florida newspaper reporter, rugby player, and self-described Peter Pan, who spends most of his time playing rugby, chasing women, and partying with teammates. When Mike Melendez, a black teammate, is falsely accused of raping a white woman, Dolan uses his reporter's position, and his investigative skills, to vindicate his friend while confronting his own demons, including bigotry. While working to clear Melendez's name, Dolan gets involved with a corrupt district attorney and inadvertently discovers another innocent ensnared in a legal system trap—a singer who is convinced he is Elvis. Through it all, Dolan struggles to leave his childhood behind him and pursue a potentially fulfilling life as a gifted writer.

A Booklist reviewer gave Atkinson's novel high marks, describing his characters as "heroically deranged people." Library Journal called Caveman Politics a "jauntily unpretentious, solidly plotted book that displays good insights into character." Regarding this last point, Keith Dixon of the New York Times critiqued Atkinson's tendency toward stereotypes—"particularly the woefully named accuser, Sherri Hogg, and her abusive boyfriend, T-Bone"—but he also noted Atkinson's abilities and identified the novel's key ingredients. "It is the humor and insight of his characters that make the novel work."

Ice Time, on the other hand, recounts Atkinson's year as assistant coach of his former high school hockey team, the Methuen Rangers. Methuen is a small, working-class town composed of Italians and French-Canadians who eat, drink, and sleep hockey. Atkinson's return to his alma mater, where he played twenty-five years before, combines elements of nostalgia, wisdom, and wit. Ice Time also examines Atkinson's time as a hockey-obsessed adolescent. In an interview with Bill Reynolds of the Providence Journal, Atkinson said, "I have often fantasized about going back to high school, to take one shot at that defining period in my life. This book details my return to Methuen High . . . to discover what it was about my experience there and on the ice that shaped me and my future." The book relates friendly conversations, locker-room banter, and Atkinson's recollections of his hockey-playing days. Readers see not only the fun of hockey life, but the rough, gut-wrenching low points as well.

In 1975, when Methuen first began its hockey program, Atkinson was the team's backup goalie. He was scheduled to play in an exhibition game after the regular season ended, but the opposing team broke the agreement. In Ice Time, Atkinson explains that "I couldn't help feeling as I drove away . . . that I'd been shortchanged one game in my career." After playing that imaginary game in his head for a quarter century, Atkinson, in his early forties, decided to something about it.

"It is a celebration of family life, 1950s values, that seemed out of fashion until September 11 and then came back into fashion," Atkinson is quoted as saying on the Marlboro, Massachusetts Community Advocate Web site "However, they were never out of fashion in small Massachusetts towns." Larry Little, in Library Journal, described the book as a story "of personal triumphs, both on and off the ice, of friendship, loyalty, perseverance, and dedicated parents." Stephan Talty wrote in the New York Times Book Review that while the profiled high school students never really seemed to accept Atkinson into their world, the author nonetheless "offers affecting elegies to small-town life. Admirably modest, blue-collar and Northern to the core." Capital Times columnist Adam Mertz judged Atkinson's sentiment as overwhelming, however. "There are only so many adjectives to describe a glossy pond primed for a pickup game—and if you stuck a spigot in Atkinson's side, you'd draw more sap than from a Vermont sugar maple." Reynolds, in contrast, simply called Ice Time "a book about why sports matter."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, March 1, 1997, Thomas Gaughan, review of Caveman Politics, p. 1108; September 1, 2001, Wes Lukowsky, review of Ice Time: A Tale of Fathers, Sons, and Hometown Heroes, p. 33.

Boston Magazine, January, 1998, Sarah Wright, review of Caveman Politics, p. 89.

Library Journal, March 15, 1997, David Keymer, review of Caveman Politics, p. 87; August, 2001, Larry R. Little, review of Ice Time, p. 118.

New York Times Book Review, June 15, 1997, Keith Dixon, review of Caveman Politics, p. 22; September 11, 2001, Stephan Talty, review of Ice Time, p. 28.

Publishers Weekly, February 17, 1997, review of Caveman Politics, p. 210; August 6, 2001, review of Ice Time, p. 80.

OTHER

Captimes.com,http://www.captimes.com/ (December 7, 2001), Adam Mertz, "Hockey Staves off Midlife Crisis."

Community Advocate Web site,http://www.communityadvocate.com/ (April 26, 2002), Cindy R. Dorsey, "Author Celebrity Series Features Regional Author."

Lawrence Eagle-Tribune Web site,http://www.eagletribune.com/ (December 23, 2001), John Tomase, "Chronicling a Season at the Rink."

Projo.com,http://www.projo.com/ (March 20, 2002), Bill Reynolds, "These Sports Booksa about More than Wins."

Salem State College Web site,http://www.salemstate.edu/ (May 20, 2002), "Salem State Professors Reflect on Basketball, Hockey in Latest Books."*