Canada - Softcover

Ford, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0061692034 ISBN 13: 9780061692031

Publisher: Ecco Press, 2013

Synopsis

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

So begins Canada, the unforgettable story of a boy attempting to find grace, written by the only writer in history to win both the Pulitzer Prize and Pen/Faulkner Award for a single novel.

This is the story of Dell Parsons, whose parents rob a bank and fracture his life into a before and an after, crossing the threshold that cannot be uncrossed. After his parents' arrest and imprisonment, Del and Berner, his twin sister, face a blank future of foster care and social services visits. Berner, willful and burning with anger, runs away - orphaning Del completely.

In the midst of his abandonment, a family friend intervenes, spiriting Del across the Montana/Saskatchewan border. There, in a dilapidated town floating in the sea of the Canadian prairie, he's taken in by Arthur Remlinger - an enigmatic, charismatic man whose own past exists on the other side of a similarly uncrossable border.

Undone by the calamity of his parents' robbery, Del struggles under the vastness of the prairie sky and the stark, unforgiving landscape to realign his sense of self and his perception of the parents he thought he knew, even as he moves on an inexorable collision course with the slow-simmering violence trembling just beneath Arthur Remlinger's cool reserve.

A resonant and luminous masterwork of haunting and spectacular vision, CANADA is an elemental novel of boundaries traversed, innocence lost, and of the mysterious and powerful bonds of family. Told in spare, elegant prose but rich with emotional clarity, lyrical precision, and an acute sense of the grandeur of living, it is a masterpiece from one of the greatest American writers alive.

About this title

Review:

"Pure vocal grace, quiet humor, precise and calm observation."--The New Yorker

"Richard Ford returns with one of his most powerful novels yet...Ford has never written better...Canada is Richard Ford's best book since Independence Day, and despite its robbery and killings it too depends on its voice, a voice oddly calm and marked by the spare grandeur of its landscape."--Daily Beast

"A triumph of voice.... The writing... is spare, but heartbreaking."--USA Today

"Awe-inspiring... The laconic, grief-stricken voice of Dell, looking back on his past, trying to make some kind sense of what happened when his family imploded, keeps you turning pages, as do the quiet, thought-provoking revelations that Ford drops in throughout."--O, the Oprah Magazine

"One of the most memorably heartbreaking novels of the year."--Christian Science Monitor

"Masterly... in Ford's American tragedy, filled with lost innocence and inevitable violence--a rusting carnival, a rabbit caught in a coyote's jaws--geography feels a lot like fate."--Vogue

"Robust and powerful... Ford is able to tap into something momentous and elemental about the profound moral chaos behind the actions of seemingly responsible people... Ford has dramatized the frightening discovery of the world's anarchic heart."--Wall Street Journal

"[Ford's] newest novel Canada, shows an artist in full command of his craft--sparsely elegant and bracingly direct, with a refreshing lack of irony or tricks."--Men's Journal

"[A] novel about big truths told by a writer with clear vision...solid, satisfying craftsmanship. This is a Richard Ford novel in the tradition of his earlier work. It also is a coming-of-age story, and a story about the discovery of identity."--Washington Independent Review of Books

"[A] deeply felt and magnificently imagined work...With Canada, Ford has given us his deepest exploration yet of weakness and betrayal set amid a boy's coming of age. It is a memorable novel, suffused with love, sorrow and regret."--Austin American-Statesman

Book Description:

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Ford's masterpiece

About this edition

• Publisher: Ecco Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0061692034
• ISBN 13: 9780061692031
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 432