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Laddar... His Whole Life (2015)av Elizabeth Hay
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Gå med i LibraryThing för att få reda på om du skulle tycka om den här boken. Det finns inga diskussioner på LibraryThing om den här boken. 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. 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.
After eight books, a couple of Governor General’s Literary Award nominations, and a Scotiabank Giller Prize (for 2007’s Late Nights on Air) to her credit, readers have come to expect a certain level of excellence from Hay, and fans of her previous work will be well satisfied with this latest effort. Hay’s prose is as fluid and surprising as ever. Settings come alive through her signature combination of poetry and simplicity. ...While interweaving the referendum and Nancy’s personal life (and the effects of both on Jim) sometimes feels forced, there is more than enough in His Whole Life – themes of permanence, identity, forgiveness, and hope – to carry readers through the slower-moving sections. Read this book for the unmitigated beauty of Hay’s language, and the quality of her storytelling. Hay’s compassionate and nuanced rendering of George is perhaps the book’s greatest achievement. There are weaknesses, including clunky exposition through dialogue and occasional lapses into cliché – the lonely young protagonist who is destined to become a writer; the repeated conceit of Nan rubbing a scar on her forehead to allude to past trauma – but these are minor irritations. More wearing is the sometimes too-transparent approach of tracing the outlines of characters around mythical and political templates: “George … was ‘the rest of the family’ the way English Canada was ‘the rest of Canada.’ That summer Quebec seemed serene in its power, secure, as if all packed up and ready to leave.” For such an assured writer, Hay relies on this device surprisingly often. Quibbles aside, His Whole Life is a moving reflection on nationhood and the evolution of an unbreakable mother-son bond. Like Jim’s question in the car, it inspires deeper questions of loyalty, forgiveness and maturity – and reassures us that growing up doesn’t always have to mean growing away.
Starting with something as simple as a boy who wants a dog, His Whole Life takes us into a richly intimate world where everything that matters to him is at risk: family, nature, home. At the outset ten-year-old Jim and his Canadian mother and American father are on a journey from New York City to a lake in eastern Ontario during the last hot days of August. What unfolds is a completely enveloping story that spans a few pivotal years of his youth. Moving from city to country, summer to winter, wellbeing to illness, the novel charts the deepening bond between mother and son even as the family comes apart. Set in the mid-1990s, when Quebec is on the verge of leaving Canada, this captivating novel is an unconventional coming of age story as only Elizabeth Hay could tell it. It draws readers in with its warmth, wisdom, its vivid sense of place, its searching honesty, and nuanced portrait of the lives of one family and those closest to it. Hay explores the mystery of how members of a family can hurt each other so deeply, and remember those hurts in such detail, yet find openings that shock them with love and forgiveness. This is vintage Elizabeth Hay at the height of her powers. Inga biblioteksbeskrivningar kunde hittas. |
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Google Books — Laddar... GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyKlassifikation enligt LCBetygMedelbetyg:
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