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Paperback

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English
Bloomsbury Publishing
01 March 2013
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:  
Imprint:   Bloomsbury Publishing
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 196mm,  Width: 128mm,  Spine: 36mm
Weight:   359g
ISBN:   9781408831007
ISBN 10:   1408831007
Pages:   528
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

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. Richard Ford lives in Maine with his wife, Kristina Ford.

Reviews for Canada

A vast, magnificent canvas. This is one of the first great novels of the 21st century -- john Banville Sunday 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 A brilliant and engrossing portrait of a fragile American family and the fragile consciousness of a teenage boy Colm Toibin, Metro A real king returns ... a story, and a vision, as sweeping as its landscapes Boyd Tonkin, Independent Astonishing ... Reviewers will be quick to proclaim that Richard Ford has written a great American novel, another masterpiece, and he most emphatically has. Canada is his finest work to date ... A powerfully human and profound novel that makes one sigh, shudder and weep. Here is greatness. No doubt about it Eileen Battersby, Irish Times His books will save you GQ A scrupulously rendered coming-of-age story Anthony Cummins, Sunday Telegraph The strength of the book is Ford's examination of flawed fatherhood, of the failures that push Dell into an uneasy maturity, one that allows him to achieve what remains the modest but profound goal of Ford's fiction: simply, to make a life ... his coda is as precise and measured as anything he has conjured before. The end, like a piece of origami, could fold right into the beginning of Ford's greatest novel, The Sportswriter. The sombre and gorgeous final two thirds of Canada rest next to Ford's best fiction Craig Taylor, The Times A true master of the modern American novel Independent Canada both grips and haunts Douglas Kennedy, Independent As opening lines go, they're corkers. The rest of the novel is quieter than you'd imagine but it amply fulfils their promise ... The result is prose so sonorous in its melancholy insightfulness that you'll want to linger over each sentence. Meanwhile, the story itself - a tale of what happens when uncrossable lines are crossed - will have you turning its pages ever faster Daily Mail Ford really excels in his virtuoso command of narrative suspense ... each part of Canada is superb in its own way ... [Ford is] a serious artist New York Review of Books


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