Consequential reading: "Canada" by Richard Ford

I am, I confess, a bit behind. Two subsequent read books lie between me and Canada, which is a shame, as this book deserves comment while still entirely fresh in mind. So apologies, both to the book and to those who read this. 

Richard Ford is a consequential writer, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a man whose personal appearances can fill theatres. Indeed, he recently appeared at Bozar in Brussels, where 300 people grilled the "legendary author" about his life and work. I was not there, thus adding another #fail to laxness in sitting down to write about this admirable book. 

I had never read anything by Ford before, so came to Canada completely fresh. The book, a nice rough-cut hardback edition, was a birthday gift from my most literary friend, Neil, and recommended itself sufficiently to jump the queue of books on the "to read" shelf upstairs. 

Canada is about consequences. Here, the consequences flow from a seemingly anomalous event in the life of a otherwise ostensibly rather bland Midwestern family (though, beware, consequences apply here too), the decision of the parents to rob a bank. The story is told by their son Dell Parsons, 15 at the time, from a perspective which is both contemporary and from the perspective of fifty years later, when Dell looks back to his life-defining event. The tone is meditative, the pace slow. Ford is not interested in twists and turns, dramatic tension, but with looking at perceptions and at how events play out and the effect they have on his characters, Dell, and, to a lesser extent, his twin sister, Berner. The first line of the novel, one of the best I have encountered for a while, encapsulates nicely how it is going to go. 

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

These flash-forwards are a constant feature of the book, and throw the focus onto how and why things happen, and with what effect, rather than what happens. To do this, and to take it at a slow contemplative pace, is a mark of Ford's supreme confidence and skill as a writer. The writing is beautiful, its surface simplicity belying the depth of its insights, insights which occasionally pull you up short as Ford nails some profundity almost in passing, frequently with the voice of an - admittedly studious and reflective - 15 year-old boy. 

More writerly confidence lies is the almost entire disconnect between sections one and two of the book. In the first, we learn about the Parsons family. We meet the mismatched parents - he former WW2 airforce bomber crew, hailing from Alabama, somehow landing in the northern climes of the empty Midwest, flitting from one ill-advised, but well-meaning "career" option to the next, including just over the boundary of legality; she Jewish, would-be urban, intellectual, thoroughly out of place - who, for all their missteps and notwithstanding their utter failure in this respect, deeply love their children and seek the best for them. We meet Dell, reflective, innocent, attracted by chess and beekeeping, perceptive and observant, and his sister, Berner, more the rebel, but both of them feeling disconnected from their home town, Great Falls, Montana. In the first part of the novel, the narrative carries us forward, inexorably, to the defining event in the family's life, a small time, almost harmless, faintly ridiculous bank robbery, the fruit of small time screw-ups in Dell's father's small-time criminal transactions with the local Indians. And then...

Richard Ford, Pulitzer winner

And then, everything changes, Dell's parents are whisked off the stage, into prison and their disparate destinies beyond, Berner takes her own path, while Dell, according to some pre-arrangement barely mentioned before, is spirited across the border into a Canada even bleaker and smalltown-er than Great Falls, into the inattentive custody of someone's probably fugitive American brother. Dell's life is transformed. This is Part two. There is barely a point of connection with Part one. It is a bold move in narrative terms, but Ford pulls it off supremely well. It works because we know Dell now, we understand his reactions, we see how the past, his own actions and those of others play out in an environment which is similar yet different, "Canada".

There is a Part three too, a kind of epilogue, in which Dell is fifty years older, which serves to close the circle. But Ford has already done his job, we get it: there is action and reaction. Things happen for reasons. Bank robbers have children. Events connect, though often in oblique, unexpected, mitigated ways. And it is possible to survive.

I may be out on a limb here, but I feel this is a profoundly optimistic, but far from simplistic, book. Dell survives. He survives, succeeds even, maybe not in some luridly against-the-odds American Dream kind of way (more "Canada" perhaps?), but because he accepts, because he observes, because instinctively he never compromises on one or two human essentials.  

The more I think about this book, the more I like it. I read it badly, too bittily, taking too long. But even so, it read well. Ford is a remarkable voice. I'll be back for more.