Book Review: Canada by Richard Ford

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My review:

Clearly part of me felt a closeness to this book simply because it took place in my homeland - in fact, the title was the entire reason I chose to pick the book up in the first place. However, even given my major bias, Richard Ford did an incredible job crafting together a very complex, heart-breaking story. He told a very dark story while still managing not to make it too depressing or heavy.

I'm sure that this is probably a book that will speak to certain people while others will absolutely hate it but fortunately I belong to the first group of readers. I absolutely adored this novel and will definitely be checking out more Richard Ford.

From the book jacket:

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

Then fifteen-year-old Dell Parsons' parents rob a bank, his sense of normal life is forever altered. In an instant, this private cataclysm drives his life into before and after, a threshold that can never be uncrossed.

His parents' arrest and imprisonment mean a threatening and uncertain future for Dell and his twin sister, Berner. Willful and burning with resentment, Berner flees their home in Montana, abandoning her brother and her life. But Dell is not completely alone. A family friend intervenes, spiriting him across the Canadian border, in hopes of delivering him to a better life. There, afloat on the prairie of Saskatchewan, Dell is taken in by Arthur Remlinger, an enigmatic and charismatic American whose cool reserve masks a dark and violent nature.

Undone by the calamity of his parents' robbery and arrest, Dell struggles under the vast prairie sky to remake himself and define the adults he thought he knew. But his search for grace and peace only moves him nearer to a harrowing and murderous collision with Remlinger, an elemental force of darkness.

A true masterwork of haunting and spectacular vision from one of our greatest writers, Canada is a profound novel of boundaries traversed, innocence lost and reconciled, and the mysterious and consoling bonds of family. Told in spare, elegant prose, both resonant and luminous, it is destined to become a classic.