”First, I’ll tell you about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later.”
Pretty good start to a novel, Richard Ford. How could you not read on?Dell Parsons’ fairly ordinary small town life ends abruptly after his parents commit a bank robbery. They are the people not accumstomed to criminal behaviour, and woefully unsuccessful at it. Afterwards Dell is moved to a remote art of Canada, which is seen as preferable to being taken into the care of the state. He longs to just go to school and be a normal kid; the cruelty of his situation makes almost unbearable reading even though he is never physically harmed.
My problem with this book rests with the fact I just don’t buy that his sensible, bespectacled mother would assist his father in a bank robbery, no matter what sort of emotional coercion she was under. It just doesn’t fit with her character, it’s not believable. And if that is not believable, what follows is also unbelievable. The description of Dell’s time in Canada is also too long and fairly dull. The first one third of the book is very good; the rest could do with a good hard edit.
Canada could have been a great book but instead it’s just a good one. If you’re after portrayals of dysfunctional relationships in remote locations, Kristin Hannah does it better in The Great Alone.
