The sparks fly upward

by Alden Graves on January 25, 2012

in Books

Aloneness isn’t the same as loneliness. It is much more terrifying. Richard Ford’s new novel, Canada, is about the kind of aloneness that can only be experienced by someone who is very young.

Dell and Berner Parsons are 15-year-old twins. They live in Great Falls, Montana with their oddly-matched parents. Their father, Bev, a gregarious, handsome country boy from Alabama, seemed an unlikely choice for Neeva Kamper, a short, intense woman tending a blossoming disappointment with life that her husband only succeeded in fertilizing, both literally and figuratively. A physical attraction the night that they met left Neeva pregnant and Bev, a sucker for old fashioned values, with no choice but to do the right thing. The attraction was short-lived and, from time to time, Neeva has thought about leaving him and her suffocating existence in Montana.

Life in the Parsons’ home was comfortable only in the sense that it was predictable. Berner inherited her mother’s sense of dissatisfaction and can’t wait to leave the dead-end promise of Great Falls behind. She has taken up with a local boy who seems destined for a correctional institute and sneaks off to meet him despite (or maybe because of) her parents’ objections.  She confides to her brother that they have “done it” in the back seat of his car. Dell isn’t sure of the specifics of what they did.

Dell always seemed much younger than his twin sister, as if their being born at the same time was a miscalculation. He spent his free time that last summer planning new chess strategies and looking forward to school starting again in the fall.

There is an undercurrent of trouble in the family that goes deeper than their shared sense of  separateness from each other. Although Neeva has a position teaching fifth-grade in a local school, Bev has recently been ushered out of  the Army Air Corp because of his involvement in a scheme to sell stolen beef. Acting as a middle man for the distribution of meat was a lucrative position, however, and Dell soon found himself pedaling the ill-gotten beef to the railroad. When one of the transactions goes sour, Bev is left owing a great deal of money to people to whom owing money can be very unhealthy.

The phone rings and there is no one on the line. Strange cars with sinister-looking occupants drive slowly by the house. Dell and Berner hear their parents furtive conversations. Even behind closed doors, they can sense the raw panic in their father’s voice. Neeva finally succumbs to it.

Two seemingly decent, ordinary people, whose hopes and dreams for themselves and their two children mirrored those of  millions of other people, do something quite extraordinary. They rob a bank. Badly, as it turned out. It was as if four members of the Parsons family had been coalesced into a single pane of glass and dropped onto concrete, shattering into a hundred pieces. Every shard inflicting wounds that will never fully heal.

In order to escape being sent to a state home, Dell is taken to Canada by a friend of his mother and placed in the care of the woman’s brother, a dapper, remote, and very mysterious American expatriate. Dell finds a strange comfort in the vast emptiness of the  Saskatchewan wilderness, but his association with his guardian leads to an involvement in something even more horrifying than his parents’ desperate crime.

Canada is told from Dell’s point of view and Mr. Ford has managed to traverse the shifting terrain of an adolescent’s perceptions about life with the skill of a tightrope walker. Dell emerges from these pages as an amazingly resilient individual; a nice kid who, having been dealt a really bad hand, still manages to stay in the game.

The novel takes place in 1960 and Dell seems terribly innocent by today’s 15-year-old boy standards. Berner takes a special delight in shocking him with her rebellious behavior, but he never demonstrates much of an enthusiasm to emulate her dogged determination to leave childhood — and Great Falls — behind in the dust. It is this innocence that makes Dell seem especially vulnerable to the wicked ways of the world, but it protects and insulates him, too.

All of the major characters in Canada flail against an undertow that eventually draws them under. Dell’s salvation is his constant refusal to accept the possibility of  drowning. Like most of the wounded souls who populate Mr. Ford’s work, his final triumph is, by most standards, a modest one. But Ford’s prose has always been firmly implanted in the real world, where  the clandestine escape across an international border to a wild, untamed place doesn’t guarantee a happy ever after.

Life is neither fair nor dependable. It isn’t like a chess board where certain pieces can only move certain ways. Maybe the gift that was bestowed on Dell, that provided courage when he was abandoned and comfort as he lay in a ramshackle cabin while the night wind howled outside, was his realization that no one has the right to expect a happy ending. The trick is to never give up hoping — and striving — for one.

Canada will be published by HarperCollins in June, 2012.

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Baby it’s warm outside.

by Jeanette on January 24, 2012

in Books

Winter is here and some of us are not the outdoors type. We are the “go-to-the-bookstore-to-stock-up- on-goodies” type.  We get books, toys, even book lights for when the day starts to turn night. For us curling up under a blanket with good books help make the winter chill a little chilly.

Starting with a gem for you, our intrepid page-adventurer, we have Winter is the Warmest Season by Lauren Stringer.  Bet you did not know that winter is the actually the warmest season we have. The young narrator of this delightful picture book explains why. Beautifully illustrated on watercolor paper, the simple, yet fantastically warm, text shows why you just might have to dream about summer to cool off from all the wonderful warmth that winter creates. So, grab a hot cup of chocolate, snuggle up by a burning fire, put on your pajamas with big warm feet and enjoy!

Perhaps you wish to stop thinking of snow and start thinking beach…and bats.  Are bats a beach going crowd? They are in Brian Lies book Bats at the Beach. What do bat families do when it is a nice summer evening? They go to the beach, of course! Packing their moon-tan lotion and baskets of goodies, each bat family get ready to enjoy sand, surf and moon. A great, sweet and funny twist to the classic beach tale. Adults and children alike will enjoy the fabulous illustrations that accent the text perfectly. Keeping warm on a winter’s eve has never been so easy (or fun) as you giggle through a night on the beach.

Next we enter the world of a fun little mouse and his adventures with Beverly Cleary marvelous tail…I mean tale of Ralph S. Mouse. Ralph has family troubles at home and thinks the way to stop them is to go to school with his friend Ryan. But even here there are troubles and dangers. What is one little mouse to do? Your child’s imagination will run wild as they travel along with Ralph and his sequels, Mouse and the Motorcycle and Runaway Ralph.

Last but not least, we have Mattie Cook in Fever, 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson. During the summer of 1793 she lives with her mother and grandfather. Like a girl of today, she dislikes her chores and wants the family business to be the best Philadelphia has seen. But then fever breaks out. Based on actual events of a yellow fever outbreak, Mattie (and reader) learn the hows of surviving a city filled with death, fear and misinformation. But also a city that has many surprises for those brave enough to seek them out and learn.

Come to the bookstore and find these and other novels, stories and adventures sure to keep you (and your imagination) warm long after the last page has been read.

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Patience as a New Year’s Resolution

January 20, 2012

Some (very) belated thoughts on New Years resolutions- before that ugly old groundhog pokes his head up from his hole. All tied in to one simple word and something the world could use more of: patience.

Did you over do it on the holiday sweets and rich foods? [...]

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Tramping through a forest of angst

January 19, 2012

I thought we were both dead! — Sylvia Glenn
Being a devotee of the Titanic saga, I recognized a lot of similarities between the 1912 sea disaster and the maiden voyage in 1986 of James Kirkwood’s comedy, Legends!
The play, like the ship, had a lot of things to recommend it. Indeed, with a crew that included [...]

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When the Book finds you

January 17, 2012

I always find it funny when the book you need finds you. Recently I get an email from my sister telling me that my nephew has to do a report on a famous person.   Who did he pick? John Lennon. Her words to him? “You have to talk to your Aunt!” Now, that might not [...]

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(Big) Easy Homework

January 16, 2012

As the next sleet storm slips through southern Vermont, I’ll be slipping off to New Orleans for a book industry event sponsored by the American Booksellers Association called Winter Institute. I can think of worse places to be during the third week of January than the Crescent City. I feel only the slightest pang of [...]

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