Canada

A boy whose ill-matched parents decide to get out of a scrape by robbing a bank ends up in a strange limbo, working for a seemingly clever but totally self-centered and slightly mad American who runs a hotel in a remote part of Saskatchewan. It's a very interior story inside the head of an adolescent who is totally separated from everything that would give him a way forward. As always, the writing is hypnotically good and rather strange.

A fine novel. Perhaps his best. His usual themes. Well-constructed, clever imagery - chess, mirrored characters, twins, national borders, the nature of criminality, etc. A mild negative - the author doesn't say anything merely twice.
I've been thinking about this novel and it occurred to me that Canada is used in somewhat the same way as Cormac McCarthy uses Mexico. When the characters cross the border they seem to be more "somewhere else" than they would be in reality. So there can be a dream-like quality, or a purgatory-like quality or the author can push his characters to extremes or amplify his symbolism or imagery. This might explain Jingles in Boofland, which, as you know, came from Windsor.

Loved this book...however, what is it with incest? I don't understand why it is important to throw in something about how the twin siblings slept with each other. It just seemed completely unnecessary. I'm bothered by details like that. Taking it out would in no way impact the story or plot, so why put it in there in the first place? To titillate people? Honestly, I don't get it. That was my only problem with the whole book.