Desperado days in border country

 
Mailbox on dirt road, Montana. Ron Chapple/Thinkstock/Getty Images
William Leith15 June 2012

Canada
by Richard Ford
(Bloomsbury, £18.99)

Dell Parsons, the narrator of this powerful, mesmeric story, tells us about the summer and autumn of 1960, when he was 15 and his life changed forever. Told like that, you might think this is a story about a kid losing his virginity. And it is, tangentially — although the circumstances are very unusual, to say the least. But mostly, it’s a story about a kid whose parents rob a bank.

One of the wonderful things about Richard Ford is that he can make people who do outlandish things, such as rob banks, seem almost normal. Dell explains how his father, who was in the Air Force during the war, became involved in small-time crime; he set up as a middle man in a racket involving stolen beef. One day, he delivers the beef but can’t collect the money, making him vulnerable to threats. He can’t think what to do so he comes up with a plan — he’ll hold up a bank, using his old Air Force pistol. He recruits his wife as the getaway driver.

All this is told from the perspective of Dell, a naive kid who likes chess, is interested in bees, and has a twin sister, Berner. Dell is a geek; Berner seems much older. She has a boyfriend, she smokes, and she’s desperate to run away from home — a rented house in the smallest of small towns in Montana.

Then there’s the robbery. I won’t tell you how it turns out. But Ford is superb at suspense. Twice in the book, you know something very bad is going to happen. You just don’t know quite when, or quite how. At first, Dell spots cars cruising past his home, over and over. Then, after his parents have been away on their mysterious trip, they act oddly — and, in fact, are never the same again. Ford captures exactly the way people in trouble never give you a straight answer. There’s a lovely scene, as the tension approaches breaking point, when Dell watches his father, Bev, try to complete a jigsaw puzzle. On the face of it, Bev is a dreadful man — dishonest and self-important. But Ford tells you lots of perfectly-placed details about him; he makes you see him through Dell’s eyes. And weirdly, you feel for him. This is a book about dysfunctional lives in a bleak North America that existed half a century ago — it sometimes has the feel of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. What a backdrop — you feel as if anything might happen here. It’s like the last knockings of the Wild West. In the aftermath of the crime, Dell escapes across the border into Canada, where life is even more marginal. Here people live in shacks, shoot geese and deer — and eventually, at the book’s climax, each other.

This is a story about adolescence, about crime, about broken families, and about trying to escape. It’s very engaging, and, in the end, quite sad.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in