The Canning Season

If there wasn't a Polly Horvath, we'd have to invent one. I love her sense of humor and the feeling that life is really weird, but most of us work hard to not notice.

But why so many bears? I've spent a lot of time in the Maine woods and only seen one. They must be all hanging out in The Canning Season.

This book is weird and inexplicable and I love it. The dark humor and the improvable plot contain very real feelings and emotions. The last ten pages always make me sob.

My take: 3 looks

What an odd little book! I say "little" because it's a whopping 196 pages. I should have been able to read it in a day, but found myself distracted and not altogether committed to Canning. That is the reason for 3 looks as opposed to more.

It was cleverly written, had a nice flow, diverse characters, and an interesting injection of oddities. However, it fell flat for me. I liked the older twins very much, but felt that they were a little one dimensional. Other than the gruesome death of their mother, there was really no other background info. They were home schooled, but by whom? One was married, but were there any other suitors? I would like to see a prequel on just PenPen and Tilly.

The girls dropped at their door were show more two sides of the spectrum. Ratchet was very introverted and Harper was very bold. Perhaps it was the intention of the author for these two to be a dichotomy, but that was not altogether clear to me. However, I did like them and felt their pain each time they were dropped on the wayside by their mothers (or mother-figure, in the case of Harper).

Maddy and Henriette were strange, completely self-centered characters. Maddy's treatment of Harper and Henriette's treatment of Ratchet paralleled one another. The tales of childhoods, families, bears and berries completed this fantastical tale. Written for young adults, this is an interesting book worth reading. show less

That was far and above one of the *weirdest* books I've experienced yet. In some parts, it feels like Horvath threw together a whole Mad Libs set of words to make a book that is random and inexplicable. Like, it just didn't make *sense.* I appreciated the relationships the aunties had with Ratchet and Harper, but it was just kind of strange.

And you know how I feel about neglect and bad housekeeping in novels. That abounded in the first part of this novel, and well, yuck. Not. My. Jam.

Also, this is not for young children. I don't even know how teens would feel about this book.

I really liked this a lot. It's about a 13-year-old girl named Ratchet who gets sent up to the Maine coast to live with her ancient eccentric aunts Tilly and Penpen AKA "those queer Menuto women" AKA "the blueberry ladies". I tagged it as adoption because I thought it was a great story about choosing your family as well as living intentionally, albeit in this case unusually. Horvath's sense of humor is wacky and dark and probably a little too grown up for 8- to 10-year-olds. There's death, abandonment, and killer bears within, but I was just tickled by it. This is a good one for readers who are mature and open-minded.

P.S. There's some swearing in this (not just blasphemy but the f-word a couple times).

This was kind of a weird book that is suprisingly (at least to me) a National Book Award winner. It's supposed to be a humourous children's novel but it's about a girl sent away by her uncaring mother to live with her elderly great-aunts--one of which is an alcoholic and both of which are having heart trouble. The place is overrun by bears and jokes are made about suicide, people being eaten by bears, unmarried pregnancy, underage driving, and kids being called f---'s. I'm no prude, but all of this did not seem funny to me, nor did it seem particulary appropriate in a children's book. In addition, most of the story was about the aunt's backstories, which made the book not very compelling. I wish I hadn't wasted my money on this one.

Polly Horvath’s The Canning Season is, undeniably, a lovely book. Her characters are distinctive, with unique voices and relatable problems, and her setting is vivid, a character in itself. However, while the book is well written, one wonders if it will appeal to the young readers for whom it is intended.

The book opens with Ratchet, a 13 year-old girl, suddenly learning that her mother is shipping her off to Maine that very day to spend the summer with “aunts” she has never met. While the omniscient narration focuses on young Ratchet, the adult characters that populate the book are often the most dynamic. Once Ratchet arrives at the farm, her aging relatives’ idiosyncrasies overwhelm her mildness, as does exuberant Harper, show more another abandoned girl left in the aunts’ care. While Ratchet and Harper both have a heavy task to contend with in acknowledging that their former caregivers have never treated them well, Horvath focuses more on the sometimes gruesome, often quirky history of twin aunts Penpen and Tilly. The aunt’s, though they are easily distracted, are natural storytellers who have led fascinating lives, but their experiences as women growing up and fending for themselves after the tragic but creative suicide of their mother (she cut off her own head) and the death of their father are not necessarily very relevant to today’s young readers. This is a great recommendation for teens and adults who have diverse interests and enjoy good literature. show less