Overview

First, I'll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then the murders, which happened later. In 1956, Dell Parsons' family came to a stop in Great Falls, Montana, the way many military families did following the war. His father, Bev, was a talkative, plank-shouldered man, an airman from Alabama with an optimistic and easy-scheming nature. Dell and his twin sister, Berner, could easily see why their mother might have been attracted to him. But their mother Neeva - from an educated, immigrant, Jewish family - was shy, artistic and alienated from their father's small-town world of money scrapes and living on-the-fly. It was more bad instincts and bad luck that Dell's parents decided to rob the bank. They weren't reckless people. In the days following the arrest, Dell is saved by a family friend before the authorities think to arrive. Driving across the Montana border into Saskatchewan his life hurtles towards the unknown, towards a hotel in a deserted town, towards the violent and enigmatic American Arthur Remlinger, and towards Canada itself - a landscape of rescue and abandonment. But as Dell discovers, in this new world of secrets and upheaval, he is not the only one whose own past lies on the other side of a border. In Canada, Richard Ford has created a masterpiece. A visionary novel of vast landscapes, complex identities and fragile humanity. It questions the fine line between the normal and the extraordinary, and the moments that haunt our settled view of the world.

Full Product Details

Author:   Richard Ford
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Imprint:   Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Edition:   Export/Airside ed
ISBN:  

9781408815168

ISBN 10:   1408815168
Pages:   432
Publication Date:   04 June 2012
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Out of Print
Availability:   In Print  
Limited stock is available. It will be ordered for you and shipped pending supplier's limited stock.

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Reviews

Ford is possessed of a writer's greatest gifts ... Pure vocal grace, quiet humor, precise and calm observation ... Ford's language is of the cracked, open spaces and their corresponding places within -- Lorrie Moore New Yorker His most elegiac and profound book yet ... Marilynne Robinson (without the theology) and Cormac McCarthy (without the gore) Washington Post A real king returns ... a story, and a vision, as sweeping as its landscapes -- Boyd Tonkin Independent

Praise for The Lay of the Land: 'One of the true works of art of our benighted era' John Banville, Irish Times 'My great book of the year ... so wonderfully written in every breath of every sentence' Hermione Lee, Guardian 'A massive, ruminative, poignant and cartartic novel ... it is a masterly account of a modulating adult life. Ford's canvas is huge, but his wealth of subtle detail remains astonishingly vivid' Independent on Sunday 'Wistful, bittersweet and often very funny ... seems to locate all the quiet despairs and hopes of the human condition with exquisite precision' Daily Telegraph

Author Information

Richard Ford was born in Jackson, Mississippi in 1944. He has published seven novels and three collections of stories, including The Sportswriter, Independence Day, A Multitude of Sins and, most recently, The Lay of the Land. Independence Day was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the first time the same book had won both prizes.

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