The whole life of this absorbing novel belongs to ten-year-old Jim, who lives in New York with his American father and Canadian mother but spends every summer at his uncle’s lakeside cabin in Canada. As in the author’s other novels, Canada and Canadian way of life is more than just the setting for the story but plays a central part in the narrative. Set in the mid-1990s when Quebec was on the verge of becoming independent from Canada, Jim’s mother Nan is very distressed at the thought of the Canada she loves being broken up. At the same time, her marriage to Jim’s father, her second and his third, is under strain, threatening that Jim’s family will similarly break up. The author weaves together the themes of political and emotional turmoil as seen from the perspective of a sensitive young boy with her extraordinarily spare but precise use of language.

My first time reading Elizabeth's work - I was very fortunate to receive an ARC via a Goodreads Giveaway. Beautifully written, heartbreaking and illuminating all at once. I'm glad I own a copy so I can go back and read it again! ( )

Why isn't this better known?! It's a beautiful story. ( )

Others have written great outlines and reviews. This is not my favorite book by Hay despite it taking place in two locales very familiar to me. The author seems to be trying too hard to create analogies and her attempts to let the backstory unfold slowly kept the characters at a distance. It felt like a book written specifically for book club discussions.

***Spoiler Alert!!***

While the relationship between a boy and his dog is a reliable coming-of-age mechanism, having three dogs die in the timeframe of the novel, and two of the deaths being so horrible is more than I could accept! ( )

Oh Canada! In relation to a novel, Elizabeth Hay once wrote "Place is everything" but I didn't fully understand that until I read this book. It's a wonderful novel on so many levels and in so many aspects of the story. Hay really draws out the connection between people and their location through a focus on the contrast between the featured family's lives in Canada and in New York. The Quebec separatist issue - a matter about which I had no feelings and few thoughts - was brought alive and relevant. But to focus on place would do this story a grave injustice. To me the story was primarily about guilt and forgiveness; about relationships and the way people can damage each other and hence what they can do to ameliorate that damage. Elizabeth Hay is a marvellously perceptive and thoughtful person whose story draws on a rich variety of cultural connections. I have read all of Hay's novels and I bought an e-book version of this novel so I could get hold of it as soon as it was published, thinking I would try reading it on my phone. However the battery use issue that I hadn't thought about stopped me reading it (and I don't have a low-battery-use e-reader). So I had to wait until I could get a copy from my local library and I have only just read it. I'm now glad that I have an electronic copy, however, as I will treasure this book always and it will be one of those very rare books that I keep to re-read. ( )