Subscribe via RSS 2.0Twenty Miles
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‘Duh, duh, duh – The Sin Bin!’ Toad sang doomfully as I stepped into the penalty box. ‘Yeah, don’t do us any favours, Ass Eyes!’ This, shouted in the direction of the ref’s zebra back as she slammed the door. The box vibrated like the inside of an old piano and I edged around Toad to sit on the bench. I felt a gathering in my throat, adrenaline turning to venom, turning on me; the slow, snake-eyed blink. So embarrassing to be caught like that, acting out a private violence, frozen into a red split-second in your mind, like dreaming of peeing and then wetting the bed. The announcer drawled my penalty over the loudspeaker.
The Scarlets are hard-hitting, tough-talking hockey players. There’s brash Toad, confident and witty, and there’s troubled Hal, unofficial team captain, whose mother is terminally ill. There’s French Pelly and there’s hilarious Heezer, who waitresses at Hooters to pay the rent. And then there’s Iz.
Iz has a long, fraught relationship with her sport. Her dad, who died before she was born, was a hockey star, and her grandparents have shaped her life around this game that is supposed to be her destiny. But when she leaves her grandmother behind for the university team, she can’t quite find her own place in the game.
From the rowdy hilarity of the Scarlets’ locker room to quiet, lyrical contemplations – and with a little beer-bonging and a lot of hockey along the way – Iz tries to navigate the ways loss plays out on the ice. Both fast-paced and hesitant, Twenty Miles celebrates women’s hockey and offers an uncompromising look at the ways in which the sport haunts the women who play it.
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