Read Around the World: Canada

First up: Canada.

Being Canadian, I’ve been reading Canadian literature all my life. But which book will I choose to represent Canada in my Read Around the World challenge to myself?

Oops. I just ran into a hitch. Shoot. Already. I said books written by an author in one country but set in another didn’t count. The problem is that the last two books written by Canadians (The Flying Troutmans and Divisadero) that I’ve read were set in the USA. Damn.

Now what? Do I skim through my mind’s reading archives until I come up against No Great Mischief or The Stone Angel? Something so quintessentially Canadian it couldn’t be anything else?

No. I play dirty. (You can’t say I didn’t warn you.)

The Flying Troutmans begins in Manitoba, and the characters are kooky Canadians. The story setting is a character in the novel, but it isn’t so major that it makes the story non-Canadian–if that makes any sense. So, The Flying Troutmans by Miriam Toews gets to represent Canada. Ta-da!!!

Plot summary: Main character comes back from France to place her sister to the psych ward and then take care of her niece and nephew. She decides she needs to find the children’s birth father and off they go in an aging minivan across the US, hoping to find a man nobody has seen in over a decade.

Reading Around the World Progress: