A Boy of Good Breeding

Matt Hartman is a freelance editor and cataloguer, running Hartman Cataloguing, Editing and Indexing Services.

Hosea Funk, mayor of Algren, Manitoba, has an overriding aim—to keep
the population of his town at, or below, 1500 people and thus maintain
its status (as the sign says) as “Canada’s smallest town.” The
mayor has information that the town thus designated will be visited on
Canada Day by the prime minister, who may well be Hosea’s biological
father. Toews has taken this improbable storyline and filled it with
warm and delightful characters: Knute, a single mom who returns to her
parents’ home to help them deal with her father’s heart attack; Dory
and Tom, Knute’s troubled parents; Max, her estranged boyfriend who
returns from Europe to see his daughter, Summer Feelin’, now four
years old. Has Max reformed? Does Knute take him back? Does Algren win
the prize?

Toews, whose novel Summer of My Amazing Luck (1996) was shortlisted for
the Leacock prize, has created a potent mix of pathos, melodrama, humor,
and not a little sex. Highly recommended.