Knute is a twenty four year old single mother who returns home to Algren with her daughter, Summer Feelin', to look after her father Tom, who has suffered a heart attack. Hosea Funk, a friend of Tom's and the mayor of Algren has a lot on his mind. The prime minister has promised to pay a visit to whichever town in Canada has the smallest population. Algren has held this position for some time but recent baby booms and returning families, like Knute's, threaten to tip Algren over the magic 1500. As Knute is reunited with Max, SF's father and Hosea finds himself compromised by his own additions to the population count, we find ourselves drawn into the warm, intimate heart of this funny, feel-good novel. First published in Canada in 1998, now being put back in print all over the world following the success of A Complicated Kindness, A Boy of Good Breeding is a funny, warm-hearted novel about families which have been split up but are inexorably drawn back together.
Knute is a twenty four year old single mother who returns home to Algren with her daughter, Summer Feelin', to look after her father Tom, who has suffered a heart attack. Hosea Funk, a friend of Tom's and the mayor of Algren has a lot on his mind. The prime minister has promised to pay a visit to whichever town in Canada has the smallest population. Algren has held this position for some time but recent baby booms and returning families, like Knute's, threaten to tip Algren over the magic 1500. As Knute is reunited with Max, SF's father and Hosea finds himself compromised by his own additions to the population count, we find ourselves drawn into the warm, intimate heart of this funny, feel-good novel. First published in Canada in 1998, now being put back in print all over the world following the success of A Complicated Kindness, A Boy of Good Breeding is a funny, warm-hearted novel about families which have been split up but are inexorably drawn back together.
A Boy of Good Breeding by Miriam Toews is a wonderfully warm, witty and wise novel of small-town dreams and eccentric families from the award-winning author of A Complicated Kindness.
Miriam Toews grew up in a Mennonite community in Southern Manitoba. She now lives in Winnipeg with her family.
In the tradition of Lake Wobegon, Toews (A Complicated Kindness) gives us Algren, Manitoba, a town noteworthy because, with 1,500 colorful residents (give or take), it ranks as Canada's smallest town. For the town's painfully shy mayor, Hosea Funk, Algren's small population spurs both pride and constant anxiety. He tallies births, deaths and all other arrivals and departures to make sure the population hews to the magic number 1,500-less than that, and the town diminishes to a mere village, but more than that and Algren might outgrow its title. Funk's obsession isn't motivated just by bragging rights, but also by a family secret: on her deathbed, Funk's mother told him that the prime minister of Canada is his long-lost father, and that same prime minister has pledged to visit the smallest Canadian town. When single mother Knute McCloud and her kinetic young daughter return to Algren and Funk's own long-distance romance threatens to catch up with him, Funk's compulsive people-counting tests his already awkward human relationships. First published in Canada in 1998, this is a sweet, funny novel full of memorable, picaresque characters and unexpected drama. (June) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
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