By Arley McNeney. Thistledown Press, 469 pp, $19.95, softcover

Post , by New Westminster's Arley McNeney, is not just the finest wheelchair-basketball novel out this season, it's one of the finest Canadian first novels I've read in ages. (That, plus Sean Dixon's The Girls Who Saw Everything , reviewed last week.)

Nolan Taylor has hip troubles–a growth plate that won't work right. Puberty ushers in an operation (botched); by the time the novel starts, she's 27 hours away from a full-on joint replacement–cut off the leg, reattach with cobalt chrome.

Any number of bionic metaphors occur to Nolan–she's a smart one–but it's not fear of commitment or emotion that cripples her most. Post (the title refers both to recovery from operations and relationships, and to Nolan's position on the wheelchair-basketball team) is mostly about guilt. Nolan gets all the way to the Paralympics, though she can walk (after a fashion) and though she's sleeping with the team manager. Nolan's doctor dad feels he should have seen the injury coming. Nolan's slacker boyfriend screws around, on the hunt for soft and stupid. (He is truly repulsive; forgiving him may be the one thing Nolan should feel guilty about.)

Post is also about sports, and McNeney writes game like a pro: "Get on the chair, shoot from outside the paint, pound in for the boards, don't give up an easy basket. In Tony's words, prevent the dipsy-fucking-doodle." And "Here are the chipped lines of this court and here is my shot missing and here is movement without patterns and my brain is too much everywhere to see anything that could be diagrammed and here I am touching the seam of the ball as I shoot and miss again and look for a seam in the play to slide into”¦in this escalating arms race where I do not have the resources to keep up and everyone shouts Jesus Christ Nolan, God dammit, Nolan, but I am a starter so I must finish my shot and since there is no other height on the team Tony continues to play me despite my flailing, my failing."

Post is also about music, both the way a song can speak your heart better than you can yourself, and the way that being a musician can get in the way of being a decent human being. And it's about New Westminster, or any small town that's changing faster than its citizens would like. And mostly, it's about powerful language in service of a true story, truer than factual, true as that snatch of song you hear for the first time but recognize anyway.