Dr Sad

by David Bateman

Stephen is middle-aged. He’s gay. He’s content, except when he isn’t. Stephen is a teacher. He’s a poet. He has a new teaching job in Kamloops, BC. Stephen has HIV.

DR SAD is the story of one man’s journey across Canada and through his diagnosis. It is the story of the distance between queer urban spaces and a small campus in a small city in small-town BC. It is the story of discovering the self within the world, and the world within the self, of discovering the difference between living a life and simply enduring one. This is a tragicomic cross-campus, cross-country romp that believes in the power of romance.

Weaving together narratives of past and present, of Toronto’s Gay Village and the streets of Kamloops, BC this lively and dynamic semi-autobiographical novel dives deeply into gender and queerness, class and privilege, and the realities of aging. It is a dynamic and engaging hybrid, stylistically daring while remaining intimate and human.

Leaping through time and mixing the playfully serious with the seriously playful, DR SAD blends poetry with prose and finds the humour in despair in one complete, glittering tragedy of triumph.

416 pages, Paperback

Published November 15, 2020

About the author

David Bateman is a spoken word poet and performance artist based in Toronto. His most recent performances, A Brief History of White Virgins or The Night Freddy Kissed Me, and What’s It Like? were presented in Vancouver, Peterborough, Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto during the winter of 2009. He teaches drama, literature, and creative writing at a variety of Canadian post-secondary institutions.

Reviews

[Jessica DeWitt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dr Sad is a novel that upturns our sense of linear time, stretching a day and a month over 300 pages draws attention to the complexity of everyday life, the complete worlds in which we each move about day-to-day. It is also a novel that is deeply about place and many of my favourite parts of the book involved the intimate relationships and interactions that Stephen has with place. This is also a book about things and inanimate objects and the relationships that we build with them. This is a book about life and mortality. About spontaneity and living life to its fullest. This is also a book about queerness, and I particularly appreciated the sexual fluidity (perhaps bisexuality or polysexuality) of some of the cis men in the book (including Stephen), a topic that is usually reserved for women and AFAB folks in the queer popular culture that I have consumed.

Did I love this book? No. I enjoyed it, and I appreciate it. But it is a sound 3/5 for me.

[R.J. Gilmour · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bateman's novel was recommended on a friend's blog and so even though I knew little about the author I decided to pick up the book. The book follows the life of a poet, Stephen, who teaches poetry at a college in Kamloops, BC and his life in downtown Toronto. Written in a short, readable style and interspersed with poems by the author, who is also a poet, it was nice to read a book about both Toronto and B.C. While dealing with some heavy subjects, including the main character's discovery of his health status, it made for a light, enjoyable read.