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    Canada
    Canada
    Canada
    Audiobook5 hours

    Canada

    Written by Mike Myers

    Narrated by Mike Myers

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Comedy superstar Mike Myers writes from the (true patriot) heart about his 53-year relationship with his beloved Canada. Mike Myers is a world-renowned actor, director and writer, and the man behind some of the most memorable comic characters of our time. But as he says: "no description of me is truly complete without saying I'm a Canadian." He has often winked and nodded to Canada in his outrageously accomplished body of work, but now he turns the spotlight full-beam on his homeland. His hilarious and heartfelt new book is part memoir, part history and pure entertainment. It is Mike Myers' funny and thoughtful analysis of what makes Canada Canada, Canadians Canadians and what being Canadian has always meant to him. His relationship with his home and native land continues to deepen and grow, he says. In fact, American friends have actually accused him of enjoying being Canadian-and he's happy to plead guilty as charged. A true patriot who happens to be an expatriate, Myers is in a unique position to explore Canada from within and without. With this, his first book, Mike brings his love for Canada to the fore at a time when the country is once again looking ahead with hope and national pride. Canada is a wholly subjective account of Mike's Canadian experience. Mike writes, "Some might say, 'Why didn't you include this or that?' I say there are 35 million stories waiting to be told in this country, and my book is only one of them."
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateOct 22, 2016
    ISBN9781501948039
    Canada

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    Reviews for Canada

    3.5/5

    742 ratings74 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Fascinating and entertaining narration of what makes Canada great. The personal stories about Mikes life it so relatable.
    • 4/5
      This is a tale of a boy abandoned by bankrobber parents and a twin sister. He is abandoned to an unimaginable stay in Canada with an odd group of goose hunters. Ford's writing is excellent. The natural manner of narration by the protagonist reads like a memoir and rings so true that the reader can forget it is fiction. A traumatic coming of age story which evoked strong feelings of angst, compassion, and uncertainty. Somehow, not clearly explained, the boy goes on to a decent life. An excellent read.
    • 3/5
      In 1960, 15-year old Dell and his twin sister, Berner, are effectively “orphaned” when their parents are arrested for robbing a bank in North Dakota. Berner runs away and a family friend takes Dell over the Canadian border to a small town in Saskatchewan to live with and work for her brother. The first paragraph sets things up, telling the reader of the bank robbery and also about murders, still to come. So, it starts with a “bang”, but after that, the book moves pretty slowly. That being said, I grew up in Southern Saskatchewan and thought the descriptions were very well done. It’s also always fun to recognize places, and there were a few really small towns mentioned nearby to where I lived. Overall, I’m considering this one “ok”.
    • 3/5
      This is the story of Dell Parsons and his 15 year old twin sister Berner growing up in Montana. Their Parents Rob a bank mostly their Father Bev's idea. But their Mother Neeva went along with it. Both are caught Berner runs away to California. Dell is taken to Canada by his Mother's friend to live with her Brother Arthur. He helps out at the Hotel and assists in Geese hunts. One day he also helps Bury to Americans that Arthur shoots.Then Dell is sent away to a school in Winipeg.The book then jumps 50 years Berner is dying and Dell meets her for the first time since they were teenagers.OK book original story bit longwinded in places.
    • 4/5
      Now I'm going on to read other Richard Ford novels. I am reminded in reading this one of Dostoyevsky and Hemingway, not to mention John Updike. Loved it.
    • 3/5
      Richard Ford has written a book that keeps the reader engaged through strong, terse prose and rich descriptions, but is also quite dull on a whole. The narrator is slightly insipid and the scope of the narrative (he's writing about it fifty years in the future) leaves lots of room for quick glimpses of tension to come and some ruminating on the circumstances the narrator faced when he was fifteen and couldn't comprehend anyway. Canada also has the most boring incest scene I've ever read. I wouldn't recommend it but I did enjoy some of the flourishes apart from the narrow yet quite discursive narrative.
    • 4/5
      I think a lot of readers might complain that Richard Ford's "Canada" is, well, a lot like a lot of other novels. It's a coming of age tale set in the big, wide-open American West and, later, the location indicated by the title. We get lots of descriptions of the flat, empty plains and the big big blue sky and, though a series of events, both ordinary and extraordinary, our narrator, Dell Parsons grows from boyhood to manhood. As might be expected of a novel set in a time-frame that is still fairly accessible to us (the late fifites) and in rather unexciting small Western towns, Ford's focus (ha ha!) is on the small stuff. His eye is drawn to detail, and his narrator, who admits that he's cursed with a good memory, recalls half-buried mental strategems and fleeting assumptions from most of a lifetime ago. This book isn't without it's share of action, but few readers would call it exciting. There's another side to the text, though, that's a bit more adventurous. Dell's the product of a friendly, open Alabama military man and the introverted daughter of Polish Jewish immigrants. Dell doesn't have too many thoughts about his Jewish heritage, but still muses on assimilation: how do you become part of a place? How do you become a person like other people? How does this relate to the process of maturation and of becoming an adult? In fact, the assimilation that goes on here concerns Dell's journey from the American Great Plains to the Canadian West -- which, for some writers, and, perhaps even for some residents of those places -- would seem hardly worth mentioning. But, then again, Ford's drawn to the small stuff, and he's able to use these seemingly small geographical shifts as a jumping-off points for a larger discourse about what belonging and separateness might mean. I was also impressed by Ford's evocation of childhood. Ford shows that Dell's experience as a boy of fifteen who lives in Great Falls, Montana but has failed to integrate with the town's residents in any significant way is exceptionally limited, and the events that destabilize his expected progression constitute a sort of exploring of a larger world. But Ford's also a perceptive enough writer to know that people Dell's age can be immature and mature at the same time, simultaneously wary and trusting. There's no definitive before-and-after for Dell: his development isn't always evenly paced, and the most shocking events in the novel aren't necessarily the ones that change him most. Ford seems to understand how tricky growing up can be and how amorphous young people can be at that age, too. I didn't love this one, but it's the sort of novel that I'd recommend to teachers and to those who spend their working lives among young people who are still in the process of sorting themselves out. I expect that most actual fifteen year-olds won''t have the patience for it, though.
    • 2/5
      No suspense, minimal action, no plot twists/surprises, endless, repetitive descriptions of the same people/scenery/smells, a dull main character- Dell.....I just kept waiting for something meaningful to happen to reward me for slogging through this long, slow novel. Two stars for masterful descriptions of towns, rooms, and all of those smells, but so little happened - actually things happened but it felt like Dell was sleep- walking through all of it.
    • 3/5
      Well-written but of a genre that generally doesn't appeal to me. The mid-West out to the borders of the coastal states style that's very well crafted but about topics and people who live pretty miserable lives. Not every book I read is about happy people -- but there's usually at least a possibility of change or redemption. This is another volume that I tip my hat to, but didn't finish.
    • 2/5
      I had high hopes for this one, however, it just never delivered.

      We find out in the first couple of paragraphs what happens in the book, but, the anticipation is 'supposed' to come with the telling of the back story. There was no anticipation and the back story is just plain boring.

      If you are looking for something to make you drowsy while suffering from insomnia, this is the book for you.

    • 3/5
      Canada by Richard Ford.

      I feel compelled to assign star ratings, but dear dear GOODREADSers, why?! Is it to keep from rereading those books that haven’t earned my love and attention? Is it out of some weird sense of guilt for the Goodreads software developers -- because somebody at GOODREADS put those stars there for me to use? I honestly just don’t know. Now, this book earns my 3-star rating because I’m not likely to reread Richard Ford’s Canada’s. That’s one of my criterion: 4 and 5 start books might get reread. But in this case, for this novel, maybe I will reread. But that’s only my criteria for maybe rereading, not my practice of rereading. (I don’t reread the upper star novel. Life’s too short, too many books!) Officially Canada -- or is it GOODREADS -- has me flummoxed with the stars. I should probably consult a psychic; this is a problem of astrological proportions. O.K. I might reread this book. Maybe. But, officially, I grant three stars, a 3-star rating. Now, clearly the book deserves at least 3.5 undulating stars, or maybe 3.49 stars. Why? Because, in time, over time, this story percolates right through to my future memory. Maybe it can be a four star novel. Still, it’s a three. Yes, a 3.

      Thanks to the author, the novel’s first person narrator, Dell, is imbued with powerful traits and full bodied development. For my efforts I am afforded unshakable concern for Dell’s future. Although it is troubling that the pacing of the novel moves as slowly it does. The narrative takes a very long time to reach any climax -- and so I put the book down for a while. Meanwhile, despite or because of the pacing, the character development feels profoundly memorable -- there’s a nice bump to the general ambience in my memory of this book: soft lighting, bubbles, a Knightley smile. etc. etc. etc. I will think of, and remember, this book for years to come. The story is borealic; hard to predict, both in motion and presence yet brilliant in ways impossible to describe, especially to those who have not experienced its novelly glow.

      Now, so far as “whatsitabout,” the story follows 14 year old, Dell, a fraternal twin -- the book also allows a fitful relationship with his sister --, as his parents create a tumultuous disruption at once ill conceived, poorly executed, and sadly predictable in its emotionally truant effect on young Dell’s life. It’s not the fact of the disruption that drives the narrative, but it is how the disruption unfolds that becomes the warmth of the story. The reader wonders if, or when, Dell will find relief.

      Young Dell’s horrific disruptions imply questions on the impacts, abstractions and presence of paternal legacy. At Ford’s most profound he asks us, through Dell, to consider fatherhood: what is it, how it is bestowed. While I’m unclear, but fairly certain, the the book is not “about” fatherhood -- traditional, adoptive or otherwise -- a central question exists as to whether young Dell receives fatherly affects or allows fatherhood to be validated through his own lack of ownership and his own inactions.

      quotes:
      p 314. “He was like my father. They each wanted me to be their audience, to hear the things they needed to express.”

      p 317. “He needed me to do what sons do for their fathers: bear witness that they’re substantial, that they’re not hollow, not ringing absences. That they count for something when little else seems to.”

      p 418. “But I simply don’t believe in those ideas. I believe in what you see being most of what there is, ..., and that life’s passed along to us empty. So while significance weighs heavy, that’s the most it does. Hidden meaning is all but absent.”
    • 4/5
      I am ambivalent about this book. On the one hand I have enjoyed Richard Ford in the past and found the book easy to read. This was a quick read, the story moved a long briskly and the characters were complicated in a good way.The story revolves around a teenaged boy whose parents uncharacteristically decide to rob a bank. Caught, they leave him and his sister with no direction nor guidance. the sister, a more independent soul, runs away while the boy is taken to Canada by his mom's friend to hide out with her brother who, also, has a hidden secret.While engaging, once I finished the book, I was left feeling unsatisfied as if it could have been much better.
    • 4/5
      I Really enjoyed this one. I thought the pace was a bit slow in the middle, but perhaps necessary. The chapters were short during the tumultuous early years when his parents become criminals, than longer during his time in the prairies of Canada, when time really slows down for the young protagonist son. Really gave me a sense of time and space. It was my first book by Richard Ford and I am looking forward to another one. Really loved his writing. I so wanted to give this 5 stars, but not this time.
    • 1/5
      Couldn't finish. Very long winded without a lot of story. Took chapters of talking about a bank robbery that parents would do. I didn't last to the actual robbery.
    • 4/5
      The opening lines are already famous, and they lure us in with the promise that what follows will be just as good. “First, I’ll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later.”
      His parents "...were regular people tricked by circumstance and bad instincts, along with bad luck, to venture outside of boundaries they knew to be right, and then found themselves unable to go back.”
      His rhythm and his voice are remarkably consistent through the book. “Our family came to a stop in Great Falls, Montana, in 1956, the way many military families came to where they came to following the war.” The cadence carries you along, like a slow-moving boat bobbing along but nonetheless headed steadfastly in one direction.
      Part One is as promised, the story of his parents and the robbery, told from the perspective of the 15 year old son Dell. This is the strongest and most memorable part of the book. It's not just Dell who is coming of age, but in some ways his parents too. Dell says about his father, “During all these years I’ve thought about his eyes, and how they became so different. And since so much was about to change because of him, I’ve thought possibly that a long-suppressed potential in him had suddenly worked itself into visibility on his face. He was becoming who and what he was always supposed to be. He’d simply had to wear down through the other layers to who he really was.”
      The tensions builds slowly to the robbery.
      “Things you did. Things you never did. Things you dreamed. After a long time they run together.”
      He describes his parents heading to the robbery. They are still regular people, they haven't yet actually gone down that branch of the fork in the road they are approaching. “…It’s the edging closer to the point of no return that’s fascinating: all along the trip, chatting, sharing confidences, exchanging endearments — since their life was officially still intact.”
      Ford compares this to drifting on a raft, or up in a balloon. “You notice it, or you don’t notice it. But you’re already too far away, and all is lost.”
      It’s a slow-mo telling. Slow-mo, freeze while he digresses, more slow-mo. But still inexorably heading towards those robberies.
      “Lacking an awareness of consequence might’ve been their greatest flaw.”

      In Part 2 Dell is borne to Canada. “…you crossed borders to escape things and possibly to hide, and Canada in his view was a good place for that. But it also meant you became someone different in the process — which was happening to me, and I needed to accept it.”
      He struggles to regain equilibrium and a new perspective, difficult for a teenager who really hasn't even yet lived enough to develop those in the first instance. But he does start to figure some things out. “Things happen when people are not where they belong, and the world moves forward and back by that principle.”
      Occasionally he casually drops in a phrase that blends in so easily with its neighbours that you delay recognising its significance. It is said as if he knew the reader already knew that particular fragment, so there’s no point embellishing it or dwelling on it. 'There it is, as you know, and so of course this follows.' Except we didn’t know. At first reading I briefly wonder “did I miss that information the first time he told me?” But of course not, he has been quite careful not to tell us. The actual information flow is precisely calibrated. And so the story unfolds. He opens the doors to the future and to the murders with these casual lines.
      A 4 for the story, but a 5 for style and the wonderful voice.
    • 4/5
      “Canada” is a meditation. Like life on the 49th parallel, it is at times bleak but also majestic in scope. It is a story of youth represented by summer below the 49th in Great Falls, Montana and growth represented by winter above the 49th.As the story opens we are told from the beginning that Dell Parson’s parents have committed a bank robbery, been jailed, his mother has committed suicide and he and his sister have been left to fend mostly for themselves and to find their way in the world without help from their parents.The Parson’s are an Air Force family. Their father a debonair southern charmer is a Captain in the USAF. Their mother, the daughter of Polish immigrants raised in Tacoma, Washington is everything their father is not – dark, dour and reserved. Their one commonality is the love they have for their daughter Berner and their son Dell. Ultimately, due to the character weaknesses in both parents and the inability to support their family, a bank robbery is committed. From the planning or lack of, until the act itself, we know that this endeavor has no chance of succeeding.The story before the robbery, unfolds in the setting of Great Falls, Montana in 1960. It is an examination of small town life; what it means to be an American and the role of the white man and his relationships in shaping the plight of the Native American’s in the region. It has a triangle of race relations between a corrupt African American Pullman porter, local Native American cattle rustlers and Capt. Parson’s running a meat scam that carried over from his time in the USAF. The story after the robbery speaks briefly to the fall out and dissolution of the family but more importantly focuses on Dell, His twin sister Berner leaves to start her own life and it is not until the very end of the book that we discover what road she traveled and where she ends up. We do know that she is headed to San Francisco in an attempt to reunite with a boyfriend she had in Great Falls.Dell is taken to Canada. This occurs because of an arrangement Dell’s mother makes with an acquaintance. Once there, Dell is more or less provided with a job, very rudimentary accommodations and left to fend for himself. Throughout the book, Dell’s interest in chess is almost an allegory of how to survive in life. Sacrifices have to be made in order to succeed and like chess, the game of life cannot be rushed or fast forwarded in order to achieve the end game.This is not a book for readers who need action in order to hold their interest. The story is told in some detail through the eyes of a fifteen year old boy. It includes all the missed cues and misunderstandings of youth and the slow realizations of what is happening as a child is forced to grow up quickly. In that sense, the book is very much a meditation. It is somewhat poetic and the beauty is in the stark detail.This is the first book that I have read by Richard Ford but from other things I have read about this author this slow, melodic, poetic way of storytelling is a signature of Ford’s. If you can allow yourself to take the time and appreciate the slow pace of this book, you will definitely enjoy it. I did and I look forward to reading other works by this author.
    • 4/5
      First, I'll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later.”From that very first line, you know that this is not going to be the typical coming of age story.Dell Parsons and his fraternal twin sister, Berner, live with their parents in Great Falls, Montana. They had moved around quite a bit and so don't have many ties or friendships within their community. At sixteen Dell is a member of the school's chess club and considers beekeeping as a hobby. Berner has a boyfriend. Their mother teaches at a nearby school.But then their father gets entangled in a shady scheme and when it goes wrong, he decides that the only way to pay off the bad guys and end the death threats is to rob a bank. When the kids' mother refuses to let her son drive the getaway car, she also becomes part of the scheme. It doesn't end well. Both parents disappear into the prison system and the teenaged Berner and Dell are left alone. Berner runs away, heading for the Coast rather than risking being in the juvenile system. Dell is spirited away to Canada and lives an independent life supposedly under the non-watchful eye of his mother's friend's brother – a secretive, non-communicative man with an incident buried in his past that will drag Dell into more of the same, including, finally, the murders mentioned in the novel's first sentence.The story is told by the 66 year old Dell, about to retire. He relates his life lessons: Other people's choices may shatter your current life in an instant, but you don't have to be defined by them. The people who do best in life are the ones who overcome loss and move onward.This is not a fast paced crime story and there aren't any spoilers in this book. Throughout the novel we are teased with upcoming information from a later part of the tale, just as we are in the first sentence. This was an interesting way of telling the story – forward flashes, giving hints and bits of events to come throughout the narrative. Instead of being 'spoilers' however, they drew me on, eager to see up close events glimpsed briefly from a distance, like a mountain range seen distantly at the edge of the Big Sky's prairie horizon.
    • 4/5
      Excellent coming of age book. So fabulous
    • 5/5
      After hesitating to try it at all (comparisons of Ford to John Updike really put me off), and then being disinfected* by some style issues in the first few chapters, I found myself totally engrossed with this novel, in which Dell Parsons, from a perspective of 50 years hence, tells us about a presumably formative period of his life--the year he was almost 16, when his parents, by stupidly attempting to rob a bank, effectively abandoned Dell and his twin sister, Berner. In order to prevent her children's ending up in the hands of the juvenile authorities in the event of her arrest (which she seems to have had wits enough to realize was inevitable), Mrs. Parsons arranged for a friend to spirit them away to Canada where presumably they could start life over without the inconvenient baggage of convicted bank robbers for parents. Berner had other ideas, but Dell ended up under the dubious protection of a big fish in the mighty small pond of Fort Royal, Saskatchewan, a place where nothing much happened other that goose hunting, and where he had plenty of time to ponder questions that had already started to bother him: does a man's character show in his face? are you destined to be who you become by some fundamental element of your makeup? does it really matter what happens to you, or will you become your true self regardless? It's a quiet journey Dell takes, despite a bit of violence here and there, and ultimately he believes he ended up precisely where he would have, had his parents gone on with their "ordinary" lives, sent him to college and never dreamed of robbing a bank or sending him off to be fostered by strangers in a strange land. I'm not sure when I stopped minding Ford's style, or if he dropped the awkward quirks that broke my reading stride early on, but by page 75 of so, I was just caught in the story, and that part of my brain that is aware of the author was sound asleep in a corner somewhere. I'm docking the novel 1/2 a star for the rocky start, although that may have been my own fault. I am very glad to have made Richard Ford's acquaintance, and am happy to say I find him much more in affinity with John Irving (Last Night in Twisted River came to mind) than with Updike. *cf Bucky KattReview written March 2015
    • 4/5
      It is a very interesting story about a short part of a man's life when he was 15 years old and how this had influenced his whole life. The events are told by himself 50 years. The story is set in three parts whereas the first part is the longest and is set in the USA. Therefore I had some difficulties to make a link to its title. Part two and three are mostly set in Cananda. In the first part he describes his family and the his parent's bank robbery. It is fascinating how detailed he is telling the incident. I got a very good feeling about all family members and the strong bond between him and his twin sister. In the second part he arrived in Cananda where he had to learn being on his own and how greenly he was. In the third part he is telling us how he is living today, what he is doing and what is important for him. It's also how he gets confronted with his past.The story is carefully written with a lot of love for all characters.
    • 3/5
      a story of a boy who survives the foolish acts of adults. His parents rob a bank and are arrested, his sister runs away and his mother has arranged that he is taken to Canada to live with unreliable strangers, completely alone. This is not giving anything away, the reader always knows because the boy, Del, tells you. The setting is 1960. I really had a hard time believing some of this story but then, maybe. Del was a twin. He wanted to go to school. He had interests such as bee keeping. He was a good kid. What really held me was the narration. Something about Del's voice was very compelling. It's a story that looks at marginalized life, breakdown of family and the effects of crime on the children.
    • 4/5
      Richard Ford is one of my favorite authors. No American male should go through life without reading the Harry Bascombe trilogy. This novel, like his earlier one Wildlife, is a reflective piece where the narrator looks back at his life. Now a days as we have the ability to download a sample of the novel, I was pretty much hooked by the first sentence. "First, I’ll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later. The robbery is the more important part, since it served to set my and my sister’s lives on the courses they eventually followed. Nothing would make complete sense without that being told first." The book goes on to detail how the narrator (Dell) and his sister moved around during their earlier years, children of a retired military man in the 60's. His father's inability to find work led him to develop a scheme of selling meat, slaughtered by the Cree Indians and sold to the railroad. He was the middleman and the one stuck in the middle when the deal went south. Soon after that Dell and his sister's life goes south as well as a failed bank robbery leaves them as virtual orphans. The narrative then moves into Dell's experience in Canada, living with an eccentric brother of his mother's friend. It is a harsh experience, but Dell manages to reflect how to adjust to the changes life throws at you. "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 fit. . . . 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.” This is an important theme in the novel, and one that is appropriate to suit some of the events in my life right now - the idea of tolerating loss well. I would recommend this book to others. If you are new to Richard Ford , start at the Sportswriter. the Harry Bascombe books, like Updike's Rabbit novels, are essential American reading experiences.
    • 3/5
      Things you did. Things you never did. Things you dreamed. After a long time they run together. Page 77Dell Parson and his twin sister Berner have their world turned upside down when their parents commit a crime that would forever separate their family. With his parents incarcerated and his sister taking off to make a life for herself, fifteen year old Dell is whisked off to the little god forsaken dot on a map in Saskatchewan. Hiding among strangers, Dell will come to terms with what life has given and taken and that sometimes life doesn't give us any answers, even when we try to ask the right questions. I'm not quite sure what to make of Canada after initially finishing the book. None of the actions of the characters in the books made any logical sense to me, even when they tried to give it an explanation. I'm not even sure what the point of the story was, but I am glad that despite having the odds stacked against him, and his numerous encounters with questionable people, Dell was able to maintain a semblance of an normal existence, whatever normal means. Given that Ford is a Pulitzer Prize winner, I'd want to give his other works a try, but judging Canada completely on its own merits, I'm not exactly convinced yet. Not a book I'd recommend that you have to pick up right at this very second.
    • 4/5
      Strange novel written from the perspective of an adolescent (who matures into a grown man) who, with his twin sister, finds himself adrift after his parents get arrested for an inept bank robbery. Before the authorities realize that the children are alone and put them into the foster care system, the sister runs away. A workplace friend of the jailed mother transports the narrator from his home in Montana to a hotel that her brother owns in a small town in Saskatchewan. A lot happens in the novel, and there's a lot for both the narrator and the reader to chew on.
    • 5/5
      This book was strange and beautiful.
    • 4/5
      In comparison to another review on here which preferred the first half of this book I think I would say that the second half was the more intriguing. Yes the first half set the scene well but it did feel like a bit of overkill. The background and the consequences of the robbery are picked over in minute detail. I definitely found this part slow going whereas the second half of the book flew by. Overall though a very thought provoking book and yes it definitely did feel emotionally draining by the end of it. Powerful stuff.
    • 4/5
      I am a big Ford fan, but bucking the critical consensus, I wouldn't put Canada up there with his very best. It's unequivocally a book of two halves, and for me, the first half was a much stronger book than the second. It left me with a feeling of slight flabbiness, and that Ford had a destination in mind, determined to get there at the expense of better construction. Del Parson is the narrator of the novel, an older man now stepping us through the most tumultuous period of his life, when his parents resolved to commit a bank robbery. That decision will shatter Del's young life and change him, and his family, inalterably. The first thing to talk about, when you're talking about Ford's books, is the prose. As always, it is achingly good. His ability to capture the thoughts of a fifteen year old boy, when written from the vantage point of a man in his sixties (both Ford, and the adult Del, looking back), is remarkable. What's even more remarkable is its readability. Ford has never been one for literary pyrotechnics, but the profundity and beauty of his words is easy glide over and miss because it's just so darned easy to digest. The simplicity belies the care and weight Ford invests in his sentences. The way he closes his chapters is just beauitful poetry. There's an equal facility (mostly; we'll get to that), with his characters. Ford isn't interested in cutting anyone's heads open, and laying their thoughts out for the reader to pick through like beachcombers. Instead we get actions, sometimes cryptic; words, often contradictory; and Del's own insightful, but limited observations. It works, very well. Del's portrait of his brittle, strained family and prickly twin sister are so real and undeniably human, I found myself helplessly loving them just as Del does. Ford struggles more in the second half of the book, where Del interacts with a far more eccentric (and I felt less real) cast of characters. Whilst Ford refuses to overwrite, in dealing with characters that are more extreme, it's easier to slip towards cliche or cypher - which disappointed me. I also felt the rushed timeline lent an unreal air to this part of the story. The tension he had built so masterfully in the first half was strangely absent, and the denouement was simply far too speedy. For all that, it is not a bad book; simply a less strong one from Ford. Well worth reading from one of the masters of American literature.
    • 3/5
      This is a compelling story of one family (two adults; two children) -- make no mistake about it. But I thought it took Richard Ford (a consummate writer, by the way) a long time to tell it.

      By the end of the story, I was exhausted. It was emotionally wrenching -- particularly from the standpoint of Dell (the boy in the story).

      I highly recommend "Canada" -- but possibly not as a first read (if you haven't already read any of Ford's other works).
    • 2/5
      Drawn by the title, and the author's pedigree, I came to the novel Canada as a Canadian, anticipating a story illuminating this vast and diverse country and people.Instead, what I came upon was an author trying too hard, and unsuccessfully, to channel the likes of F. Scott FitzGerald or John Steinbeck, carrying with him a typically American ignorance of Canada, its people, its culture, its heritage.The story revolves, endlessly, around a bank-robbing mother and father who, through their idiocy and sense of entitlement, leave their children, fraternal twins, barely into adolescence as orphans and essentially homeless. The novel is full of implausibilities: the fact there are no social services to take charge of the children at the time of the arrest of the parents; the smuggling of the unreliable narrator into Canada to an alleged safe house; the robbery itself. The list is just too long to enumerate here.The writing, although lauded by critics as a 'meticulous concern for the nuances of language', to this reader fell flat, lacklustre, without that alleged meticulous concern for the nuance of language. Frankly, it read as so much blah, blah, blah. In fact, the first third of the book is interminably expository, given little credence or gravitas by the nature of Ford's use of the unreliable narrator.When we finally come to the denouement, we are treated to a moment out of an old Peggy Lee song, Is That All There Is? Which is followed quickly by a complete change of scenery and time, one cannot help but feel because the author ran out of steam.The characters were so utterly cardboard as to be ridiculous.And let us not even begin to speak of the gross misunderstanding of anything to do with Canada, let alone Saskatchewan. Frankly, upon consideration, I would recommend every Canadian to pick up this novel, particularly if you're from Saskatchewan, just to explode into laughter at how wrong this writer could envisage that oceanic, wildly free geography we know as the middle province of the Prairies. Finally, good job, Richard Ford, by way of insulting every Canadian who might read this book by stating several times in the novel: Canadians are just like Americans, and, Canadians want to be just like Americans. Seriously? Next time the author of Canada wishes to write with authority about a foreign country, I suggest he actually live in that country for a period of time, immerse himself in the culture and the people, then, and only then, he might begin to approach the subject matter with some authority. But, then, maybe not. Any author who can write with sublime confidence that Canadians are just like Americans plainly hasn't a clue and should stick to writing about his own culture.
    • 3/5
      For me, there was just far too much detail---Dell's remembering of 50 years ago in extreme detail, down to colors and textures and eye meanings, mouth movements. Yes, a large part of the novel happened over a very few days when the life-changing event for him occurred but it was exhausting to listen to. I kept waiting for the audio to actually get somewhere. It seemed overly long with Dell's over-analysis of everything that had happened to him as a 15 year old---yes, absolutely not normal in any stretch of the word, but also not completely great reading/listening-to material in a novel.