Canada by Robert Ford

I'm sure I've missed commenting on a lot of books but thought I'd catch up at least a bit. I re-joined my bookclub. I guess I mostly did it for the social interaction, I'm finding I didn't do it for the books.

I think "Canada" wins an award for the most boring book I've ever tried to read. It wasn't even in our library so I had to buy it. It was a waste of $15!!

The book is written from the point of view of a 15 year old boy who has a twin sister. The mother got pregnant and that's why she married the father of the children. The boy says many times that the marriage was probably a mistake. They were really not alike at all. The mother was very quiet,  unsociable, worked as a teacher. She was from Seattle and was Jewish, which meant when she married a gentile she was shunned by her family. The father was in the airforce. He was a southerner, from Alabama or such. He had wanted to be a pilot but wasn't able to pass the tests and so ended up being a bombadier instead. The family was constantly moving from city to city following his father's posts. In his most recent post he had gotten in with the illegal sale of beef. When he was caught by the military and that avenue closed he turned to the railroad. One of the shipments was tainted and the fellow at the railroad refused to pay. This left the father in a quandry with the local indians who had given him the beef and who he owed $2500.

When he was a child he told his son that he had discussed robbing a bank with a friend. So he decided that to get rid of his $2500 debt he was going to have to rob a bank. He talked his wife into it and they did rob a bank. They did a pretty botched up job of it and only stole exactly what they needed, $2500. They were caught and sent to jail. The daughter was sent to live with her grandparents in Seattle and the boy was sent to live with a relative in Manitoba.

That's as far as I got in the book. I just couldn't force myself to read more when there were so many other things I wanted to read.

According to another book club member the discussion they had was very interesting but most of the members felt the same way I did about the actual book.