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Canada

by Richard Ford
Canada

  • Comment on this title
  • Synopses & Reviews
  • Award Excerpt

ISBN13: 9780061692031
ISBN10: 0061692034
Condition: Like New


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Awards

2013 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

When fifteen-year-old Del Parsons' parents rob a North Dakota bank, his normal life is altered forever, and a threshold is crossed that can never be uncrossed. His parents' imprisonment threatens a turbulent and uncertain future for Del and his twin sister, Berner. Fierce with resentment, Berner flees their Montana home for California. But Del is not completely abandoned. A family friend spirits him across the Canadian border toward safety and a better life. There, afloat on the Saskatchewan prairie, Del finds only cold refuge from Arthur Remlinger, an enigmatic and alluring American fugitive with a dark and violent past.

Undone by the calamity of his parents' robbery, Del struggles to remake himself. But his search for grace only moves him nearer to a harrowing and murderous collision with the forces of darkness that shadow us all.

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.

Review

“Pure vocal grace, quiet humor, precise and calm observation.” The New Yorker

Review

“A triumph of voice....The writing...is spare, but heartbreaking.” USA Today

Review

"A magnificent work of Montana gothic that confirms his position as one of the finest stylists and most humane storytellers in America...Ford has left the suburbs of New Jersey two thousand miles away and delivered his most elegiac and profound book." Washington Post

Review

“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

Review

“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

Review

“Told in Ford's exquisitely detailed, unhurried prose…Ford is interested here in the ways snap decisions can bend life in unexpected directions...Canada's characters grapple with this...and the answers they come up with define the rest of their lives, along with this quietly thoughtful book.” Entertainment Weekly

Review

“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

Review

“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

Review

“One of the most memorably heartbreaking novels of the year.” Christian Science Monitor

Review

“[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

Review

“Marvelous…Canada is a masterpiece of a story with rich language and dialogue filled with suspense, bleakness, human frailties and flaws, and a little bit of hope seen through the eyes of an adolescent boy whose emotions seem often aligned with the desolate landscape of its setting.” The Oregonian (Portland)

Review

“A must-read....Canada reminds us why Ford is considered one of this country's most distinguished writers.” St. Paul Pioneer Press

Review

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

Review

“[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

Review

“This is a brilliant and engrossing portrait of a fragile American family and the fragile consciousness of a teenage boy. It is also fascinating in the way it reveals the plot in the opening page and then winds backwards, offering a more and more intimate version of the story.” Colm Toibin

Review

“[Canada]confirms his position as one of the finest stylists and most humane storytellers in America… his most elegiac and profound book…” Washington Post

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.

Synopsis

The only writer ever to win both the Pulitzer Prize and Pen/Faulkner Award for a single novel (Independence Day) Richard Ford follows the completion of his acclaimed Bascombe trilogy with Canada. After a five-year hiatus, an undisputed American master delivers a haunting and elemental novel about the cataclysm that undoes one teenage boys family, and the stark and unforgiving landscape in which he attempts to find grace. A powerful and unforgettable tale of the violence lurking at the heart of the world, Richard Ford's Canada will resonate long and loud for readers of stark and sweeping novels of American life, from the novels of Cheever and Carver to the works of Philip Roth, Charles Frazier, Richard Russo, and Jonathan Franzen.

About the Author

Richard Ford is the author of the Bascombe novels, which include The Sportswriter and its sequels, Independence Day — the first novel to win the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award — and The Lay of the Land, as well as the short story collections Rock Springs and A Multitude of Sins, which contain many widely anthologized stories. He lives in Boothbay, Maine, with his wife, Kristina Ford.

4.8 10

What Our Readers Are Saying

Share your thoughts on this title!
Average customer rating 4.8 (10 comments)

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momomom , June 04, 2014
"This has developed as a bookshop in the classic mould, as befits a shop within a stone's throw of the British Museum," says Chris. "However, it does this without any 'stuffiness', and actually feels like one of the new breed of independents but in the heart of the city." Olivia agrees. "I think it's brilliant," she says. "It's a great example of turning a bookshop into a social hang out and then selling books to boot."

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`
winkyscarlett , January 31, 2013 (view all comments by winkyscarlett)
I read a lot so it took a lot of reflection to select my favorite book of the year. This book is compelling, hypnotic, and lyrical. It was neck and neck with "Bring Up the Bodies" but then I remembered the heart-stopping (won't give any spoilers) plot development, and that broke the deadlock. This book dominated my inner world for days after the actual reading ceased, and on the strength of that I vote for "Canada" for the 2012 Puddly.

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`
az reader55 , January 31, 2013
From the first page you know what happens but the author takes you on a journey and you have no idea how the events will transpire. Wonderful writng and realistic charachters.

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(5 of 10 readers found this comment helpful)
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`
Robert Medrano , January 30, 2013
Richard Ford at his finest

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(3 of 6 readers found this comment helpful)
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`
arakady226 , January 30, 2013
A superior ride from the vast expanses of rural prairies with an outcast 15 year old boy as he tries to comprehend the fact that he really does not know anyone - from his parents to his twin sister to the adults who take him in after his parents commit crimes which he thought were not within their frame of capability. A view told from that 15 year old's point of view with incredible accuracy and believability.

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georgina , January 02, 2013 (view all comments by georgina)
Poetic and profound. A quiet masterpiece. One that I'll re-read for the rest of my life.

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`
Richard Kurjan , January 01, 2013
Many authors position their narrators as non-adults (children, teenagers) and ones comes away with the feeling that this child is the most precocious, perceptive person in the universe. Even if the author gets the age and voice right, the development of the character tends to somehow miss or the plot does not keep pace with the character and voice. Yet, in "Canada", Richard Ford seems to have made it all happen and at the right level for a 15 year old boy,Dell Parsons, whose life is suddenly and irrevocabl altered. There is no surprise about what transpires per se, since he tells us from the very line about the robbery his parents committed, and then he will tells us about the murders. So, there is no surprise there. However, the manner in which he relates the tale, and the fact that a single action can have such consequential results and how those results are effected differently in different people is shear brilliance. However, the truly believable narration and the character that resides therein is the strength of this tale. It is not so much what happens, but how it is told within the framework of a mind that can barely grasp what is happening and how and what to do which propels this novel. Dell crosses geographical borders and emotional borders. He moves from near boredom and security of a small Montana town to the edge of his known world into the unknown and isolation in another country and world. A world that is very different from Mom and Dad and his sister into separation, fear, and even murder that begs the question about what do we really know about ourselves and others, how well do we really know these people, an how rapidly can any of it all just disappear as we know it.

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thirdey , January 01, 2013
this is a deeply poetic, visceral and somewhat understated novel about loss and and the impact of the loss on our view of the world and how we govern our lives as a result of it. his narrator in a 60 year old man, who experienced his orphaned state as a result of his parents imprisonment after they robbed a bank. ford is meticulous in his use of language to convey time, place and feelings. this is a novel for discussion, with many possible views of its layers of meaning. a first rate page turner and a work a with which we can identify a portion of ourselves.

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Amy Franzen , January 01, 2013 (view all comments by Amy Franzen)
The sense of time and place is so beautifully rendered. Each character is a gem. Each sentence is a thrill to read. The story is unlike any other I know.

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Stephen Sinclair , January 01, 2013 (view all comments by Stephen Sinclair)
A wonderful read: great characters and situations, highly recommended.

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Product Details

ISBN:
9780061692031
Binding:
Trade Paperback
Publication date:
01/22/2013
Publisher:
HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS
Pages:
420
Height:
1.10IN
Width:
5.30IN
Thickness:
1.25
Author:
Richard Ford
Author:
Richard Ford
Subject:
General Fiction
Subject:
Literature-A to Z

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