Canada by Richard Ford

Richard Ford is one of those writers that does not have a middle ground for his readers. There are many folks who find him to be one of the best writers of his generation and others who feel a consistent desire as I read one reviewer say " to slap his main character for 300 pages"

Those reviews of course are usually for the Bascombe stories that started with The Sportswriter.

I have enjoyed the Bascombe stories. Some times in reading those stories I feel very connected to the author and his character. Ford's characters think much of the time and we learn to like that about them....or put the books away.

So I was of course interested in the new book. This book tells the story of Dell and Berner fraternal twins growing up in Grand Falls, Idaho. Their father is an optimist always believing things will work out. Dad, a Captain in the Air Force, somehow gets in trouble in some kind of embezzling scheme involving stolen cows and the local Indian tribes and gets demoted. He soon retires and finds that his skills do not transfer that well to the civilian world. The children's Mom Neeva is a small, ethnic looking, city girl who is ill suited for life on the prairie.

As their Father drifts from job to job we learn about the twins. Dell, the narrator of the story is a 15 year old who is small for his age, with no real friends, who nonetheless looks forward to starting high school in the fall. He plans to join the chess club and yearns to become part of a group of friends. Dell taller, physically stronger than her brother has a darker, more impatient soul.

Life comes crashing down when his father still drifting from job to job gets himself in a pinch with the local Indian tribe on another low grade criminal enterprise he is working. Threats are made and inexplicably their father decides the way out of this is to cross the border into North Dakota and rob a bank.

Ever the optimist Dad thinks he will blend into the scenery. Of course, he cannot, eventually police come and arrest the kids parents. What happens next is the larger part of the story.

The truth is, not much does. Dell goes to Canada, becomes involved peripherally with a small town criminal who himself is on the run from America.

To be clear this is not a good book. About 200 pages in I had a strong sense nothing of import was going to happen. While the characters occasionally have good lines that make you remember what Ford's special skill is for the most part this book still has the annoying self centered characters but lacks much of the thinking material found in his earlier work.

The plot of the book, the whole story of the young man's first summer and fall in Canada, is weak and frankly no better than a B grade pulp plot.

This book if written by a no name author would have gotten no positive spin and would soon be in the bargain bin. The book's jacket says that this book will be a classic, that is not the case unless it becomes a classic of how an author can disappoint. Ford's characters are often pretentious and annoying, this book does not even have the redeemable qualities that bring them into the level of interest and compassion.

Poor. Poor. A waste of time.