Canada – Richard Ford
This novel was recommended from so many different sources it was really only a matter of time before I got to it. It was another holiday read.
Here is the blurb …
“First, I’ll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later.”
When fifteen-year-old Dell Parsons’ parents rob a bank, his sense of normal life is forever altered. In an instant, this private cataclysm drives his life into before and after, a threshold that can never be uncrossed.
His parents’ arrest and imprisonment mean a threatening and uncertain future for Dell and his twin sister, Berner. Willful and burning with resentment, Berner flees their home in Montana, abandoning her brother and her life. But Dell is not completely alone. A family friend intervenes, spiriting him across the Canadian border, in hopes of delivering him to a better life. There, afloat on the prairie of Saskatchewan, Dell is taken in by Arthur Remlinger, an enigmatic and charismatic American whose cool reserve masks a dark and violent nature.
Undone by the calamity of his parents’ robbery and arrest, Dell struggles under the vast prairie sky to remake himself and define the adults he thought he knew. But his search for grace and peace only moves him nearer to a harrowing and murderous collision with Remlinger, an elemental force of darkness.
A true masterwork of haunting and spectacular vision from one of America’s greatest writers, Canada is a profound novel of boundaries traversed, innocence lost and reconciled, and the mysterious and consoling bonds of family. Told in spare, elegant prose, both resonant and luminous, it is destined to become a classic.
This is an unexpected novel -the complete incompetence of the bank robbery (quite funny) contrasted with the chillingness of Arthur Remlinger. Dell was alone – very alone – and I was impressed with his resilience. The characterisation, the scene setting are all magnificent.
More reviews …
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jun/03/canada-richard-ford-review
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/10/books/review/canada-by-richard-ford.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
http://kevinfromcanada.wordpress.com/2012/06/01/canada-by-richard-ford/