pickJennie‘s Boy, by Wayne Johnston (2023 🇨🇦)
Premise: A memoir of the author‘s childhood living with chronic illness in an impoverished Newfoundland community.
Review: This is close to being a perfect memoir: full of humour, insight, and vulnerability. It does a fantastic job of showing the reader the insecurity of growing up in illness, poverty, and as the child of an alcoholic, but also the power of familial love.
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Current read. A book you dive into despite the author‘s restraints. Mary Lawson tells good stories without embellishment. She relies on great characters and a compelling plot leaving the reading to infer bits here and there. IOW she assumes her readers are smart which is always a joy. #canadianwriter 🇨🇦 #canadianlitsy
so-soNot nearly as wonderful as Johnston‘s fiction. This was a bit of a slog honestly, and I don‘t have high hopes for it on #CanadaReads. I think it‘ll be voted off first or second.
My bookspin for March, a Canadian #Canlit children's classic from the 1980s. Hope to start later today!
so-soThis is a unique look at poverty and chronic illness through the lens of a young boy in a fiercely stubborn family of survivors. It is a CanadaReads contender this year. I am not sure how applicable it might be to all of Canada. It would have been nice to hear how the rest of the family made out.
I‘m working my way through my last unread book from the Canada Reads shortlist. With about a hundred pages to go, I like it but I‘m not passionate about it. Guess that means WATCH OUT FOR HER is my top pick for this year, and it‘s bound to get voted off either first or second. Hopefully the debates‘ll still offer some interesting discussion fodder, whether or not I have strong feelings about the books on the table.
