Canada

Feb 08, 2013 Jeffrey Keeten rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

”The world doesn’t usually think about bank robbers as having children--though plenty must. But the children’s story--which mine and my sister’s is--is ours to weigh and apportion and judge as we see it. Years later in college, I read that the great critic Ruskin wrote that composition is the arrangement of unequal things. Which means it’s for the composer to determine what’s equal to what, and what matters more and what can be set to the side of life’s hurtling passage onward.”

What do you do w...more

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Dec 08, 2012 Gaeta1 rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobooks, book-group-reads, everybody-else-is-reading-it, rainbow-book-challenge, bashed-over-head-by-author, death-by-foreshadowing, develpd-healthy-dislike-of-author, drowning-in-detail, dry-very-dry, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink, foolishly-suckd-n-by-glowing-review, i-give-up-on-this-author, improbable-in-any-known-universe, just-pile-on-the-tragedy, painfully-earnest, portentous-beyond-endurance, rainbow, read-2012, self-satisfied-author-alert, stockholm-syndrome, take-your-prozac-first-dreary, tiresome-gratuitous-sex-advisory, you-had-to-be-there, gettng-into-mind-of-othr-cultur-not

I was on the selection committee of a bi-country "real world" book group, and one of the two books that my fellow committee members and I were determined to push through the overly complicated process for picking the following year's reading list was Richard Ford's "Canada". We were so resolute, in fact, that we were willing to split off from our European counterparts if "Canada" did not make the final cut. (In fact, the group did break up, but it was over a book that we *had* to read, which pro...more I was on the selection committee of a bi-country "real world" book group, and one of the two books that my fellow committee members and I were determined to push through the overly complicated process for picking the following year's reading list was Richard Ford's "Canada". We were so resolute, in fact, that we were willing to split off from our European counterparts if "Canada" did not make the final cut. (In fact, the group did break up, but it was over a book that we *had* to read, which proves, I suppose, that loathing a title choice is an even more powerful force that anticipating a hyped-up book; there's a moral in there somewhere if you want to find it.) I loved the The Sportswriter trilogy and the reviews for Ford's latest book were laudatory. I was sure that our book group brinkmanship would be worth it.

The novel starts off with a bang, as all the reviews will tell you. You know there's going to be a bank robbery, which is always an interesting prospect. And I liked the depiction of Dell Parsons. I have a son almost the same age, who is also a bit diffident and self-contained, but with an inner core of toughness, just like the main character. (I actually started the novel as an audio while I was walking with my son, and when Dell became obsessed with the idea of keeping bees, I snapped off my book and asked my son what he thought about having his own personal beehive; he immediately got excited, as I knew he would be.) But this novel, which I wanted to love, and was willing to fight for, turned sour for me very quickly. It was a terrible disappointment in so many ways.

I tend to write reviews mostly in response to my own experience of the world; there's a lot of great analysis here on GR, and if someone else had all ready made the points that I would make, I don't really see the need for yet another review. Some other readers loathed this book as much as I did, and we did so for the same reasons. But deeper than my dislike of Ford's dreary, self-important posturings was the major stumbling block that I just couldn't accept the basic construct that Ford sets up. It just didn't work for me on so many levels.

First: his depiction of a military family. I just knew, after listening to Ford throwing in every tired cliche of the military (the socially isolated, the rootless, the peripatetic living practically out of suitcases,etc.etc.) that the author had been in the military just long enough to think that he knew the military, and to dislike, it too. Now negative portrayals of the military, when accurate, don't bother me in the slightest; in fact, I enjoy them. But Ford doesn't understand the military, not at all. (A writer doesn't have to have been in the military to get it; Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff portrays the accelerated nesting--the koa rocker-German cuckoo clock-Polish crockery jumble of furious unpacking--the usual military experience--extremely well.) We military people tend to carry an immense amount of stuff around with us like a snail with a shell; it's what we do to prove we've been around. So...it's highly outside the norm that a military officer's family would live such a stripped-down life; during my husband's career I met just a few--a very few--people with homes like that. It's not likely, but it IS possible.( It's also, quite frankly, the way a lazy writer who really doesn't much about the military would imagine such a lifestyle to encompass.)

It is also highly unlikely that the Parsons family would be so isolated within the Air Force itself, particularly in that time and place. I understand that the family was supposed to be eccentric, even dysfunctional, and that the mother thought she was supposed to be better than everyone else, that she didn't want the kids to mix with anyone. So...I accepted--with difficulty--this far-fetched scenario, too. The moment I just couldn't buy, however, the moment when Ford's cardboard miltary family came crashing down for me was when Dell's father stated that as Air Force brats they knew nothing about the world, or where they lived, and spent too much time indoors. What? WHAT? I don't know of any military parent anywhere who would think that, or say it. It's one of the things that makes the military life bearable, what EVERY military parent says to themselves, and to the kids, that moving from base to base every few years gives the kids to see more of the world than most civilian kids ever do. So I call BS on Ford's whole negative, erroneous, stereotypical views of the military, which I believe come from his own less than positive experiences.

There's another personal reason why I don't buy Ford's book. You see, one of my uncles by marriage robbed a bank, in the same region as Montana, during the same year that "Canada" is set. It's quite a story; both my youngest aunt and my older brother, who accompanied my grandparents on their journey to clean up the mess that their daughter had made of her life, felt compelled to tell me, the last time I talked to either of them, exactly what happened according to their point of view. My aunt, the third sister, had run off with a convicted felon whom my grandparents understandably despised (my mother's family was used to drama, as my own mother had eloped with a Brother of the Catholic Church to Las Vegas, but my aunt's spouse selection was too much for even them to accept) some years before my uncle's botched attempt at armed robbery. My aunt hadn't been heard from--at all--for the better part of a decade. Social services called my grandparents up when they hauled away my uncle and my aunt fell apart. Whether she had had a true nervous breakdown (my second aunt's opinion) or was just flakey and lazy and couldn't get her act together (my mother's opinion) is moot; the point is that someone called family members right away; they just didn't walk out the door and leave the kids all alone in the house, as Dell and Berner are left alone in the book. So no, I don't think Ford's plot twist is realistic, and that (and I'm not being spoilery here since the entire novel is a flashback) Dell's mother, who isn't estranged from her family, would entrust her kids to some near stranger, or that it is likely that the police wouldn't report what was going on immediately to social services. Of course, it could happen--most anything can happen--but when a writer resorts to that feeble excuse, he's just messing with the reader, and being rather contemptuous at that. I can only say that from my own personal experience the plot doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

So, at this point of the novel I was doing a lot of eye-rolling, when I came upon *the scene*. You might know what I mean. Thank God it's not explicit but what the hell is this creepy, totally unneccesary, totally gratuitous (view spoiler) doing in the book? Is this Ford's attempt to be edgy? Please. It's completely forced--pretty much like the entire novel--and seems utterly out of character for Dell.

Even with all my objections-the Air Force family by way of Mars, the preposterous unlikelihood of Dell and Berner being abandoned after their parents's arrest--I could have accepted the book. Maybe. I don't know every military family in the world, and thank God, I only have one uncle who robbed a bank in 1960 in the Upper Midwest. But deep down, I don't feel that Ford respects his reader. He repeats things. Over and over and over. Dell's father is tall and bombastic. His mother is dark and "ethnic" and superior. The making of every baloney sandwich is described in excruciating detail, and every piece of laundry flaps slow-mo on the clothesline. Ford connects the dots between every theme point he's making--there's some weird blather about the differences between the United States and Canada that's especially puzzling to this American with a Canadian mother--and underscores these lines again and again so that you, dear reader, will get the grand themes that the author is supposedly wrestling with and which you are too dim to understand on your own. It's as if Ford is afraid of letting the reader draw his or her own conclusions--which might be, in fact, be ones that the author doesn't want you to draw. So no, I didn't find the book a moving allegory on life, and the sins of the parents being visited on the children, blah, blah, blah. I found it a highly artificial, schematic work, by an author who makes the mistake of confusing grimness for profundity, and portentousness for insight. And you know what? It's just plain DULL. That's the worst sin of all.

My vote for the most over-rated book of 2012.(less)

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Apr 28, 2013 Judy rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I waited patiently for something to happen. I was tired of hearing how short his Jewish mother was & how tall his Alabama father was & how he had a twin sister... It finally did happen around 160+ pages, but fizzeled out again. Came to, near the end alittle.
I thought it was a real downer...
Had to convince myself to stick to it w/ the hope that the story might ingnite into something interesting. It was heavy with describing things, which the author did over and over.
The parents, having fi...more

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Aug 26, 2012 Michael rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, coming-of-age, montana, canada, family-relationships

Well written and compelling tale of a 15 year old boy, Dell, coming to terms with the sudden disintegration of his family in northern Montana and his resilience during a period of being under the control of strangers with little concern for his situation or fate. Though that sounds like the story of a large population of kids from broken families who get placed into foster care, in this case Dell’s life gets disrupted due to his relatively ordinary parents committing a bank robbery. Instead of f...more Well written and compelling tale of a 15 year old boy, Dell, coming to terms with the sudden disintegration of his family in northern Montana and his resilience during a period of being under the control of strangers with little concern for his situation or fate. Though that sounds like the story of a large population of kids from broken families who get placed into foster care, in this case Dell’s life gets disrupted due to his relatively ordinary parents committing a bank robbery. Instead of foster care, his mother’s friend intervenes after the parents’ arrest and sneaks him into an unfortunate living situation in Saskatchewan.

From my reading, the story is told wonderfully through Dell’s retrospective perspective. This approach takes away some of the drama and immediacy of directly rendering the tale from the young Dell’s experience. However, Ford doesn’t seem interested in melodrama, and the rendering of the tale by the Dell-to-be works in favor of engaging the reader’s empathy. It also allows Dell to prepare the reader for when shocking events are about to be portrayed, starting with disclosure of the bank robbery in the first sentence of the book.. In my view, the pleasure of Ford’s creativity lies in his portrayal of the process by which Dell comes to understand his parents’ mistakes and to survive the indifferent, exploitive, and scary situation he gets into in Canada. That his loving parents in effect cause the disaster to Dell’s life through ineptness highlights the precariousness of ordinary families. I loved Dell’s portraits of his ex-Army father, struggling to find work and dabbling in black market schemes, and his skeptical, aloof mother, unhappy in her unfulfilled academic dreams

As a character, Dell will stand in literary history as a relatively unique vision for a teen’s adaptation to tough circumstances. For example, in comparison to the tough and resourceful girls of action featured in Ward’s “Salvage the Bones” and Woodrell’s “Winter's Bone”, Dell survives primarily by going along and getting along, biding his time for favorable opportunities like the master chess players he admires. His twin sister (I didn’t mention he had a twin, did I?), perhaps resembles these other fictional heroes in taking a more self-reliant approach to survival. I didn’t give this book 5 stars because I am a sucker for more action-oriented characters. But which approach is more realistic or likely to survive in better shape?
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Jun 27, 2012 Will Byrnes rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: books-of-the-year-2012

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. UPDATED 6/26/12 - see link at bottom

Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Ford’s latest novel begins:

First, I’ll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later

Really, could anyone read those lines and not want to see what follows?

Ford gently but steadily builds tension from the opening sentence, when we know murders are coming, to the event itself. In the meantime we come to care about our narrator, Dell Parsons, and have a rooting interest in how he will far...more

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Mar 14, 2013 Francisco rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Sometimes I feel that the publishing world has a sickly fear of boring the reader. In the YA world, which is the world I inhabit as a writer, the pressure is never-ending for the novel to clip along at a lively pace less you lose your young hyper-active reader. It's almost as if we must do all we can to give TV and Video Games and Instant Messaging a good run for their money. So it is good to read authors who are willing to give their readers a different kind of pleasure - one that requires a sh...more

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Jun 08, 2012 switterbug (Betsey) rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: pulitzer-material, favorites

"First, I'll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later." That's the first two lines of the book.

Beyond the vast ocean of Saskatchewanian wheat fields, burrowed with the detritus of past lives and half-lives, a fifteen-year-old boy is marooned on a forgotten prairie land with fugitives and transients, like a scrap of driftwood or a windblown, bone-cracked bottle. His surname is a mystery for twelve chapters; it's released, finally, like a swift, so...more "First, I'll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later." That's the first two lines of the book.

Beyond the vast ocean of Saskatchewanian wheat fields, burrowed with the detritus of past lives and half-lives, a fifteen-year-old boy is marooned on a forgotten prairie land with fugitives and transients, like a scrap of driftwood or a windblown, bone-cracked bottle. His surname is a mystery for twelve chapters; it's released, finally, like a swift, soft teardrop.

Ford's great American/Canadian novel is a coming-of-age adventure tale about realizing one's own identity through narrative, memories, and self-examination. Moreover, it's about crossing, dissolving, and abnegating boundaries, physically as well as psychically, and generating rapport between our internal selves and the external world. At the heart of this story are the borders we cross and the crosses we bear. Symbolic, too, is that Saskatchewan is the only Canadian province with no geographic physical properties to denote boundaries. The abandoned young Montanan hero redefines divisions and indivisible spaces with deep reflection.

"If anything, the similarity to America made its foreignness profound..."

This half of a twin, living as if he were an orphan, tells us his story with tender wit and optimism amidst the garbage heap of objects and dwellings inhabited by outlaws and goose hunters. He was taught to "always know something that I could relinquish." And he was able to see the world as its opposite, and draw strength from that.

The view of melting pot America ultimately merges with the cultural mosaic of Canada, and becomes a theme. In lesser hands, many aspects of this book could have seemed repetitive, tautological, but Ford amplifies the meaning of every revolving concept by mining it to its irreducible essence. Nothing is diminished in this masterpiece. The themes are potent, and not diluted with hollow slogans.

The story's hero narrates dramatic, life-changing events that happened to him and his twin sister, Berner, after their parents robbed a North Dakota bank in 1960. The twins' father, Beverly Parsons, was an Air Force bombardier from Alabama, a smiling, talkative, self-serving handsome six-footer who returned from the war ultimately misunderstanding the world he came home to, and unsuited to the woman he fell in love with. But he embraced all that America stood for.

Mother, Neeva, was a bespectacled intellectual from Tacoma, the daughter of educated Jewish immigrants, a woman who didn't want to assimilate with the people and land of Montana. The mismatch of parents created a terrible, unresolved tension that was chronicled in Neeva's journal and left as part of a legacy of loneliness for the children to untangle or inherit.

This nerve-shattering story is filled with vivid incidents and characters alike, propelled by charm and clarity, provocative as it is diverting. Short, fluent chapters maintain a lyrical, vibrating rhythm. It is accessible, engaging, eloquently woven and plotted, not one word out of place, not one event unnecessary. The prose is unprepossessing and yet noble, austere but lush, stark yet playful, elegiac but bright, polished with all the messiness of life.

It moves with the alacrity of a gazelle, spins together with effortless grace. As radiant and moving as a cinnamon sun and as sublime as a silver moon. This is a sensuous departure from the Frank Bascombe novels. The understated narrator's voice is flawlessly vulnerable, wry, and lightly brushed with a mournful surrender.

As an addendum, I read that Ford is planning to write more novels set in Canada. According to Harper Collins, "We are thrilled to be publishing the first of Ford's novels to be set in this country" (north of the 49th parallel). (less)

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Feb 05, 2012 A. rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The beauty and power of Canada snuck up on me. Hard to believe since my expectations were sky high going in. Ford takes his time in this novel and I didn't immediately warm up to the rhythm of his first-person narrative. Dell Parson's is looking back on events that happened when he was 15-year old boy and he tells you immediately that there will be a bank robbery and some murders in his story. It felt like the robbery was a long time coming.

Ford gives us magnificent descriptions of 1960 Great F...more The beauty and power of Canada snuck up on me. Hard to believe since my expectations were sky high going in. Ford takes his time in this novel and I didn't immediately warm up to the rhythm of his first-person narrative. Dell Parson's is looking back on events that happened when he was 15-year old boy and he tells you immediately that there will be a bank robbery and some murders in his story. It felt like the robbery was a long time coming.

Ford gives us magnificent descriptions of 1960 Great Falls, Montana, Dell's father, mother and sister as well as the interior life of an adolescent who has never fit in. At times the descriptions made the unravelling of the plot seem a bit laconic, but they were so precisely rendered I did not dare skip a word. Often, I read paragraphs over again.

When the events really start moving - about halfway into this book - you are so hooked by the vast open landscape of Montana and the Dakotas and so enmeshed in the thoughts of Dell that every subtle movement creates an uneasy feeling. I think the finest scene in the novel is when Dell and his twin sister Berner are in the empty house after their parent's have been arrested for the robbery. (I'm not giving anything away here that isn't given away on the first page or two of the book.) Two fifteen year olds that have never been left alone for a day are now set adrift into a strange new world. They end up going in different directions and Dell's leads to Canada and the murders he spoke of in the book's first paragraph.

Ford is doing something quite marvelous with the barren landscape and how it influence people and events. Not only are the prairies barren of human life, but the homes that Dell occupies are quite devoid of the human touch. All his important belongings can fit into a pillow case and on the night Berner and he spend in the house after their parent's are hauled away, we see how little they have really inhabited their little rented house. This emptiness invades Dell's thoughts and impact his many ruminations. I think that mix of environment and humanity is the true power and majesty of this work. (less)

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Jan 21, 2013 Barksdale Penick rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Like other books by Richard Ford, Canada is a pleasure to read. There are some lovely observations as we read the story of children whose parents ineptly rob a bank, are imprisoned, are never see their kids again. This is not revealing a detail of the plot, as everything that happens is fully previewed by our narrator. From page 1 we know that his parents will rob a bank and that they will go to prison, and we know that something bad will happen in Saskatchewan well before it does and exactly w...more Like other books by Richard Ford, Canada is a pleasure to read. There are some lovely observations as we read the story of children whose parents ineptly rob a bank, are imprisoned, are never see their kids again. This is not revealing a detail of the plot, as everything that happens is fully previewed by our narrator. From page 1 we know that his parents will rob a bank and that they will go to prison, and we know that something bad will happen in Saskatchewan well before it does and exactly what happens shortly before the shots ring out. I rather enjoyed this reverse technique of plot development.

Here is a passage I loved near the beginning:

"And yet if they [his parents] were telling this story, it would naturally be a different one, in which they were the principals in the events that were coming and my sisters and I the spectators--which is one thing children are to their parents. The world doesn't usually think of bank robbers as having children--though plenty must. But the children's story--which is mine and my sister's--is ours to weigh and apportion and judge as we see it. Years later in college, I read that the great critic Ruskin wrote that composition is the arrangement of unequal things. Which means that it's for the composer to determine what's equal to what, and what matters more and what can be set to the side of life's hurtling passage onward."

I found that description of writing beautifully turned, and there are other gems scattered throughout. But overall the theme of Canada seems forced. A basic tenet of the story is how important Canada was to the boy's life, and yet I would have thought the story would have been almost the same if it were set in Wyoming or Walla Walla or Wichita. Tumultuous events occur, and the boy's life takes direction. His sister's life goes in a very different path, and Ford seems to be attributing much of this to a life lived in Canada. Perhaps if this were a subtle suggestion I would have reacted differently, but it is so front and center that I couldn't help feeling it was a story forced into an ill-fitting mold. You will enjoy reading the book, but won't come away persuaded by the structure.(less)

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Dec 08, 2012 Julie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: best-of-2012, contemporary-fiction, canada-theme-setting, read-2012

I feel honored when a book teaches me something new about reading, when a writer has the confidence in his story to pull no punches with his writing, trusting in the reader’s intelligence to absorb a story without telling her what she should feel.

What Richard Ford teaches me with the exquisite Canada is patience. He taches me to pull back, hold on, allow the plot to reel out while keeping a closer eye on the characters and their actions and reactions. What he offers in return for my patience is...more I feel honored when a book teaches me something new about reading, when a writer has the confidence in his story to pull no punches with his writing, trusting in the reader’s intelligence to absorb a story without telling her what she should feel.

What Richard Ford teaches me with the exquisite Canada is patience. He taches me to pull back, hold on, allow the plot to reel out while keeping a closer eye on the characters and their actions and reactions. What he offers in return for my patience is writing that makes me nearly weep with envy: clean yet evocative, each detail chosen to express character and place without eclipsing the reader's imagination.

The narrator, Dell Parsons, looks back across five decades to 1960, the year his mother and father robbed a bank in a small town in the plains of eastern Montana. From Dell's tone - sometimes tender, sometimes ironic but always mild and thoughtful - you are fairly certain he turns out okay, despite the crises he endured during his formative years. These crises take a while to unfold. Ford introduces the bank robbery in the novel's opening line, but maintains a brilliant balance between tension and torpidity by circling around the incident for more than one hundred pages.

In the interim he builds the portrait of a family who misses the mark of the American Dream. Bev Parsons, a husband with a handsome head in the clouds, leaves the Air Force and settles his wandering family in Great Falls, believing his charisma will lead to easy success, free from the structured demands of the military. He is mis-matched physically and intellectually with Neeva, his diminutive wife who rarely looks up from the drudgery of her life lest she be forced to acknowledge her disappointments. Their offspring - an awkward daughter saddled with an ugly face and the unfortunate name of Berner, and her younger-by-six-minutes twin, Dell, blessed with his father’s looks and an accommodating spirit – are raised with love, if not much stability.

Dell looks back at the decisions his parents made, at the moments when they approached the cliff and could have turned around, without judgment or bitterness. This is remarkable, because their foolishness upended his life; the bank robbery is only the beginning of a free fall that ends in murder, suicide and the dissolution of his family.

At the end of his life as he knows it, Dells sets out on a melancholy Odyssey from adolescence to adulthood. His internal journey first parallels a literal one as he is moved from Great Falls to Partreau, Saskatchewan, a near-ghost town in the desolate prairies of central Canada. And from there his story continues as he fends for himself in a small world of cast-off adults.

Canada's story is created by a landscape of reflection and resolution, of lives that turn on a dime, where the border between possibility and no turning back can be crossed only once, but consequences follow forever.

Ford’s deliberative style is like a skilled horse rider’s loose hold on the reins – he doesn’t need to make the obvious moves to steer the horse – it takes only a slight movement of thigh or heel to communicate his desires. Equally, Ford communicates soul-shifting menace through the subtleness of his characters and his setting- what he leaves out speaks to the power of what remains.

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Mar 23, 2013 Claire McAlpine rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

It is the first book of Richard Ford's I have read but it already feels like reading something that will endure as a classic. This is not a book to race through, it is laden with the considered thoughts of Dell, as he looks back at two major incidents that occurred on the periphery of his life when he was 15 years old, but were significant enough to mark its future course and his demeanour.

My full review here at Word by Word.

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Jul 09, 2012 Marty rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

This book opens with two very provocative sentences, "First, I’ll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later". But if you think you will be reading a pot boiler, a thriller, you will be wrong. (It is a page turner though.) It is the story of a tragedy, of a rupture in the normal fabric of life. Read it for the writing. The prose is lean and spare and beautiful. The sense of place evokes the endless expanse of the prairie in the midwest of the U.S....more

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Jun 27, 2012 Julie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

What an odd read!!!
The antithesis of a thriller!

There are no surprises in this. You know from the opening sentence that is parents are going to rob a bank. You know that his mother is going to commit suicide in jail. You know that there are going to be murders. You know in advance that his sister is going to run away. You know that he is going to Canada.

Maybe some books are like a river tumbling down from the mountains - fast paced, gathering speed, sweeping all along on its rush to the sea. B...more

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Oct 16, 2012 Teresa rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Something is bothering me about this book, but I'm not sure what it is. In the beginning, I found the narratorial tic of Dell's constantly telling us that he'd already said something a bit much, though that tic did fade as the novel went on. And though this book is long, I feel there's something missing. As Dell says later, there is no need to look for hidden or opposite meanings in his story, which is well-told and compelling in Ford's reliable prose, but perhaps 'meaning' is exactly what I fee...more

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Oct 04, 2012 Don rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy--they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into ... their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.
--F. Scott Fitzgerald

(FROM MY BLOG) My tastes in books are peculiar and inconsistent. I don't generally read "best sellers," including those blockbusters that appear on the front page of the New York Times book section. Not out of some misplaced form of snobbishne...more

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Aug 07, 2012 Jeff Lacy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

No surprise from Ford that this is a robust story, masterly told, with a round and empathetic protagonist in fifteen year old Dell Parsons who survives after his parents rob a bank and his twin sister runs away. Disappointed with Ford's prior novels, yet an admirer of his short stories, this novel did not disappoint. It included the insight of his collection "A Multitude of Sins," as well as the richness of the writing found in "Rock Springs." This is a finely styled and disciplinely crafted wo...more

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Jun 11, 2012 Lou rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: june-2012-read, arc

Kin and crimes has been a strong theme in stories recently. Many really have made a mark with some shocking realistic brutally and honesty, memorable characters and some have had a hint of the supernatural.
This story involves the telling of two kids of there parents crimes. The characters and writing was done well. I got to a point though just it became too hard to get through I really wanted something to pick up the pace change the mood. It is funny how friends can agree on stories and on othe...more

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Jun 26, 2012 Derek rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Yaaawn.. I must say it is very well written and I could picture all the boring details and bleak scenes.. which seemed to go by at an excruciating, belabored pace. It was like watching a train-wreck in super-duper slow motion, frame-by-frame: Two train-wrecks to be more precise, for this poor little slob of a main character.

This is one of those books that may actually translate into one of those acclaimed "films".. which, if it does, I will then have wished that I had waited for the film to com...more

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Mar 22, 2013 De rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This gripping novel, once again about crossing borders, in time, in reality, geographically, about 15 year old Dell just fits in with what I've been or am reading off late. I've just entered the second half, crossed that line from USA into Canada along with Dell. The narrator of the story, the history, the poetry, the life stream. From Montana into Saskatchewan, from a home and a family to a life on your own, from boyhood to manhood. Not Billy's or John's story from The Border Trilogy, o no, tho...more

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Jan 28, 2013 David rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This felt soooo long to me. The length seems to take what could have been an interesting story and render it thin and lugubrious. I can't decide if this is really one novella or two related short stories but, in any event, there is the sense throughout that it is excessive by a few hundred pages. From what I have read, it is the writing that was supposed to have kept me engaged and willing to linger. For whatever reason that just didn't happen (as it did in a similar book, "Plainsong", which was...more

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May 18, 2013 Bill rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Canada is a coming of age novel describing what happens to 15 year old twins Dell and Berner Parsons, of Great Falls, Montana, when their parents, Bev and Neeva, rob a bank. These unhappy events are told in the first person by Dell. Most of Dell’s story is set in the present with occasional backward retirement age reminisces. Ford easily accomplishes this change in time periods.

There are three parts. The first occurs in Great Falls and describes the shock of the robbery and consequent arrest of...more

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May 06, 2013 David Hallman rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Richard Ford – Writing Philosophy in the Genre of Fiction

As my partner Bill lay in bed in our home dying of pancreatic cancer, he told me that there was one message that he wanted me to say to his family members and friends during his funeral service: “Tell them to be kind to one another.”

I was reminded of this as I read the final page in Richard Ford’s recent novel “Canada.”

It’s not that Bill’s words and those that Ford has his narrator speak were conveying the same message. Rather, it is that...more

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May 05, 2013 Tom rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013-books-read

God forbid that some Hollywood producer or megastar would try and take a Richard Ford novel to the big screen. For one, Richard Ford doesn't run in 90-minute segments, and any action of substance is probably reserved for internal monologue. That would make most 20-something moviegoers gag with a spoon, or turn back to texting. (I, myself, had to set the novel aside between parts, to regather my attention and patience.)
Yet, here we have great literature, and even though you have to show patience...more

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May 02, 2013 Brian rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013

Lovely prose style, although almost too crafted. There's a sense of each chapter having to end on a profound observation or prefiguring thought. It's a somewhat churlish criticism because the writing is good and these endings are not heavy-handed, but I did find it jarring from time to time.

I had an odd sense of waiting for the book to start throughout most of the reading. Most reviews mention the dramatic opening sentence; it sets up two crimes, which the novel then slowly explains. (Thinking a...more

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Apr 27, 2013 Lila Vogt rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Richard Ford is a master in describing the inner landscape of his characters and this story is no exception. Dell Parsons, the 15 year old protaganist, is taken in by a mysterious American business owner, living in a small town in the praries of Saskatchewan, Canada, north of Montana, after his parents commited the ill-conceived and crazy scheme of robbing a small town bank in rural Montana. He never saw his parents again after they were imprisoned.

Dell ruminates over the lives of his parents, h...more Richard Ford is a master in describing the inner landscape of his characters and this story is no exception. Dell Parsons, the 15 year old protaganist, is taken in by a mysterious American business owner, living in a small town in the praries of Saskatchewan, Canada, north of Montana, after his parents commited the ill-conceived and crazy scheme of robbing a small town bank in rural Montana. He never saw his parents again after they were imprisoned.

Dell ruminates over the lives of his parents, his twin sister and his relationship with them and the events leading up to the crime which changed all of their lives forever; and left him to figure out his place in the world pretty much on his own. The twin angle was never really explored. Fraternal twins, yes, but still there seemed to be a lack a basic connection that you usually find in twins.

Events in Canada involve him in a murder orchestrated by his mentor and the closest person to a role model he has, the American expat businessman, Arthur Remlinger; which adds to the emotional baggage that he has to learn to navigate.

As most of Ford's books, it is contained writing, with a slow moving, quiet plotline and plenty of rumination.

Dell says at the end of his story, when he is a professor of English at a college in Ontario, Canada; happily married and childless,

"My mother said I'd have thousands of mornings to wake up and think about all this, when no one would tell me how to feel. It's been many thousands now. What I know is, you have a better chance in life-of surviving it-if you tolerate loss well; manage not to be a cynic through it all; to subordinate, as Ruskin implied, to keep proportion, to connect the unequal things into a whole that preserves the good, even if admittedly good is often not simple to find. We try. All of us. We try.

He was referring to a Ruskin quote: Composition is the arrangement of unequal things.

I was sympathetic to Dell, but also frustrated at his passivity and his creating a life that semed too safe and predictable, after the two dramatic events that ocurred during his adolescence. There was an emotional distance that left me wanting more from this character.
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Apr 22, 2013 Ariel Uppstrom rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book was one for my book club books. It follows the story of Dell, the son of parents who turn to bank robbery on a whim to solve a much more easily solved problem. This results in their arrest and Dell and his twin sister's exile into the unknown. Dell finds himself thrust into his mother's bizarre plan to send him to Canada to live with a man she had never met but was related to a co-worker of hers. Dell follows along and does as he's told only to come into another individual's drastic re...more

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Apr 10, 2013 Tod Cheney rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Life Lessons.

A brother and sister, twins, are ejected from their mid west middle class stations in life when their parents decide to rob a bank and are tracked down and put in jail. Berner, the girl twin, walks away from home one afternoon, and Dell is driven to the Saskatchewan prairies and a new life filled with characters that wouldn't survive long anywhere else but in that Canadian backwater. Ford is a patient writer. Wherever he takes you, you get the full monte. If you ever ran into one of...more

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Apr 03, 2013 Randal rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Expats; literary readers

I just finished reading this, so may come back and amend those four stars to something between three and 16. I will say I read it obsessively in the course of about 36 hours, so between work and sleep I did little but read. I am likely to pick it up and read parts of it again.
In structure, it reminds me of Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez, in that the author in both cases reveals the major plot points from the start and then writes the reader through the steps leading ine...more I just finished reading this, so may come back and amend those four stars to something between three and 16. I will say I read it obsessively in the course of about 36 hours, so between work and sleep I did little but read. I am likely to pick it up and read parts of it again.
In structure, it reminds me of Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez, in that the author in both cases reveals the major plot points from the start and then writes the reader through the steps leading inevitably toward the violent conclusion. The tone and almost pointillist style of narration are similar in both books, as is the shifting between past and future events, while maintaining narrative hindsight. GGM's book is, I think more accessible. If it did not exist I might rate this one higher.
The issues of loss/crossing boundaries and looking back on what we leave behind are personal for me (although the narrator, Dell, and his twin sister, Berner, do not choose to leave their childhood lives behind, once that moment is forced upon them, they do so in different ways, one in Canada and one in the United States, and come to their own ends, in part affected by the movement across the border).
The book also calls up much of the prairie fiction I read in university; Ford mentions some of the names in the acknowledgements at the end of the book (Wallace Stegner and Guy Vanderhaeghe) but there's a much longer list and I can't help but think of Robert Kroetsch and Rudy Wiebe and Aritha Van Herk and the godfather, W.O. Mitchell, and the first critical book I read on the subject, Vertical Man, Horizontal World; Man And Landscape In Canadian Prairie Fiction.***
Unlike many of the protagonists in these works, Dell Parsons does not stand isolated on the wide prairie, although he is certainly isolated. Instead, he is more like a mouse, hidden among the grain stalks. Arthur Remlinger stands tall, by contrast, and you'll have to read the book to discover what happens to him ... and Bev thinks he can hide in plain sight because the prairie is so big, and you don't have to read very far to discover how that turns out.
Do I recommend it? Yes, with reservations. It has given me a lot to process; those of you who have never moved across a border will undoubtedly take something different from it. It's not an easy read in that it's dense, packed with description and the description carries meaning (again like Garcia Marquez in this regard), so you have to work your way through it. For the right reader, there is much to take away.
It's quite a book.
***I note with dismay that Goodreads doesn't even have photos of many of the Canadians on this list. Jingoistic bastages ...(less)

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Apr 01, 2013 Sara Dyck rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ford’s narrator, Dell, is a boy many readers could identify with – isolated, observant, craving the order of bee-keeping or chess - who is violently thrust across the border between the normal and the criminal. Terrible and frightening events occur to him as he works through the lessons that help him survive. (At a simple level, Dell brings to mind Charles Dickens’s boy characters.) Near the end, at the age of sixty-six, I think he comes to what Eric Erickson calls the stage of “integrity versus...more

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Apr 01, 2013 Larry rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Teenager Dell Parsons and his older sister seemed to have a normal life in Great Falls, Montana, in the 1950s, until his father decided to rob a bank. Dell’s father, who dabbled in petty criminal business schemes, decided a single bank robbery would provide the cash he needed to pay off some former associates who were threatening him and his family. Dell’s weak-willed mother, who intended to take the children and leave, was eventually talked into driving the get-away car.

The book chronicles the...more Teenager Dell Parsons and his older sister seemed to have a normal life in Great Falls, Montana, in the 1950s, until his father decided to rob a bank. Dell’s father, who dabbled in petty criminal business schemes, decided a single bank robbery would provide the cash he needed to pay off some former associates who were threatening him and his family. Dell’s weak-willed mother, who intended to take the children and leave, was eventually talked into driving the get-away car.

The book chronicles the subsequent lives of Dell and his sister, after their parents are arrested and jailed.

About his father, Dell says: “And since…he didn’t consider himself the type of person to commit an armed robbery, actually committing one didn’t immediately change his opinions of himself, and possibly didn’t right up to the moment detectives came to our house…”.

As the now-adult narrator, Dell observes: “When you think hard on why two reasonably intelligent people decide to rob a bank, and why they remained together after love had begun to evaporate and blow away, there are always reasons…reasons that in the light of day don’t make any sense at all and have to be invented.”

As their parents were hauled off to jail, there was a thin line between the extraordinary and ordinary for Dell and his sister: “Neither one of us thought to ask why had they robbed a bank, why had that ever seemed like a good idea. To us, it had just become a fact of life.”

His sister ran off to California, and a family friend took Dell north of the border to Saskatchewan, where he was taken in by another character who had his own seedy past, which subsequently pulled Dell, once again, into the edges of the criminal world.

As an adult looking back, Dell notes: “…admittedly I’m intrigued by how ordinary behavior exists so close beside its opposite.” And: “The prelude to very bad things can be ridiculous, the way Charley said, but can also be casual and unremarkable. Which is worth recognizing, since it indicates where many bad events originate: from just an inch away from the everyday.”

Despite his father's influence and his brush with an enigmatic killer in Saskatchewan, Dell resisted the pull toward a cynical or nihilistic perspective of life.

“It’s been my habit of mind, over these years, to understand that every situation in which human beings are involved can be turned on its head. Everything someone assures me to be true might not be. Every pillar of belief the world rests on may or may not be about to explode. Most things don’t stay the way they are very long. Knowing this, however has not made me cynical. Cynical means believing that good isn’t possible; and I know for fact that good is. I simply take nothing for granted and try to be ready for the change that’s soon to come.”

In summary, it was not a remarkable or breath-taking book. But it was well-written and the unusual plot about teens whose parents were bank robbers makes it a page-turner. It’s worth a read.
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title link	preview: Canada
avg rating	preview: Canada Goodreads rating: 3.52 (8255 ratings)
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