ABBEY'S BOOKSELLER PICK ----- This wonderful newbook, set in the 50's is lengthy, engrossing and quite unique. The story is narrated by Dell, the teenage son of Bev and Neeva, and twin of his bossy sister Berner. Dell has been used to moving around while his father is employed by the military. But now Bev has left the air force and has brought his family to Great Falls, a small, dull town in America's south. It's the summer holidays and Dell can't wait for them to end so he can attend the local school for he has a strong thirst for knowledge. Father Bev tries his hand at various jobs, selling cars and then farm plots, but he's not very successful and when an opportunity to make some money selling cattle rustled by the local Indians arises he is immediately involved and very soon out of his depth. Neeva, his artistic and ethereal wife, is a teacher, a loving mother and soon to be a party to his criminal activities. This is a worrying, tense and strange book with memorable characters and a surprising, yet utterly believable, plot. Written in a plain style, but with descriptions that vividly depict the dusty towns where Dell and his family live happily – until an act of desperation by his parents tears the family apart and sends Dell to Canada, where he meets the unpredictable and charismatic Arthur and gets to work in his sleazy hotel. A great book! Peter

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"First, I'll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then the murders, which happened later." In 1956, Dell Parsons' family came to a stop in Great Falls, Montana, the way many military families did following the war. His father, Bev, was a talkative, plank-shouldered man, an airman from Alabama with an optimistic and easy-scheming nature. Dell and his twin sister, Berner, could easily see why their mother might have been attracted to him. But their mother Neeva - from an educated, immigrant, Jewish family - was shy, artistic and alienated from their father's small-town world of money scrapes and living on-the-fly. It was more bad instincts and bad luck that Dell's parents decided to rob the bank. They weren't reckless people. In the days following the arrest, Dell is saved by a family friend before the authorities think to arrive. Driving across the Montana border into Saskatchewan his life hurtles towards the unknown, towards a hotel in a deserted town, towards the violent and enigmatic American Arthur Remlinger, and towards Canada itself - a landscape of rescue and abandonment.  But as Dell discovers, in this new world of secrets and upheaval, he is not the only one whose own past lies on the other side of a border. In Canada, Richard Ford has created a masterpiece. A visionary novel of vast landscapes, complex identities and fragile humanity. It questions the fine line between the normal and the extraordinary, and the moments that haunt our settled view of the world.

By:   Richard Ford
Imprint:   Bloomsbury
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Edition:   Export/Airside ed
Dimensions:   Height: 234mm,  Width: 234mm,  Spine: 153mm
ISBN:  

9781408815168

ISBN 10:   1408815168
Pages:   432
Publication Date:   June 2012
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Awaiting stock  
Our supplier is currently out of stock. You can order it and we will ship it to you upon arrival.

Richard Ford was born in Jackson, Mississippi in 1944. He has published six novels and four collections of stories, including The Sportswriter, Independence Day, A Multitude of Sins and, most recently, The Lay of the Land. Independence Day was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the first time the same book had won both prizes.

One of the true works of art of our benighted era John Banville, Irish Times on The Lay of the Land My great book of the year ... so wonderfully written in every breath of every sentence Hermione Lee, Guardian A massive, ruminative, poignant and cartartic novel ... it is a masterly account of a modulating adult life. Ford's canvas is huge, but his wealth of subtle detail remains astonishingly vivid Independent on Sunday Wistful, bittersweet and often very funny ... seems to locate all the quiet despairs and hopes of the human condition with exquisite precision Daily Telegraph

Ford is possessed of a writer's greatest gifts ... Pure vocal grace, quiet humor, precise and calm observation ... Ford's language is of the cracked, open spaces and their corresponding places within -- Lorrie Moore New Yorker His most elegiac and profound book yet ... Marilynne Robinson (without the theology) and Cormac McCarthy (without the gore) Washington Post A real king returns ... a story, and a vision, as sweeping as its landscapes -- Boyd Tonkin Independent