Firstly, I didn't finish reading this book. Secondly, I usually don't comment/review on the things I've read, but I was asked by someone on Facebook why I stopped reading Canada. This was my reply: I've never been a Ford fan and took a risk on this one based on all the hype here in Canada, which I can only now assume was based solely on the title. I thought the narrative was poorly executed and the characters just collections of words. Ford failed at turning those collections of words into the illusion of flesh and soul. In an effort to make them interesting, he just kept pouring over the parents and how they differed from one another (him amiable and tall and Southern; her reticent and dark and European). This could have been explained by the narrator in a couple of paragraphs, and reinforced/strengthened by *showing* their interaction and relationship through some actual story rather than having the relationship told/explained over and over again by the narrator. Rather than building depth and complexity, what it did was draw attention to the clumsy choice of narrator and point of view. I felt like he wrote himself into a bit of a corner and was too lazy to go back and make the necessary major changes. I made it pg. 195 and it took me 13 days. The kiss of death for any book I'm reading is when I’m consciously avoiding reading the book. I was sitting on the porch having just read two chapters, wondering if there was anything on TV I wanted to watch. I turned to my wife and said “I hate this book.” She urged me to stop reading it because she could see how miserable it was making me.