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Product Description
From Amazon
Although Homesick won Guy Vanderhaeghe the Toronto Book Award, given to honour books "evocative of Toronto," it is really a very orthodox Prairie novel. Set in the tiny Saskatchewan town of Connaught, Homesick sympathetically explores the confines of a shattered family with the sensibility of a latter-day Sinclair Ross.
As Homesick opens, the Monkman family lies in a state of emotional ruin. Alec Monkman lives alone in Connaught, dreaming of drowning and half-heartedly tending the local businesses that he has come, almost accidentally, to dominate. His widowed daughter, Vera, whom he has not seen or spoken with since she left home to join the Women's Army Corps during the Second World War, is returning to Connaught on a bus with her teenage son, Daniel, who has been showing signs of running wild in Toronto. Alec attempts to treat Vera's return as a simple reunion, but she is having none of it--the old conflicts in the Monkman family have been aggravated by their years apart, allowing the old father-daughter feud to become even more venomous. As Daniel and Alec grow closer to one another, and as a mining operation turns Connaught into a thriving western boomtown, the Monkmans enter even more treacherous territory: old family secrets begin to come to light, threatening to further shred this already fragmented family. Vanderhaeghe tells a straight, sympathetic story, giving all his characters the benefit of a compassionate hearing, sliding into their pasts in order to justify their disjointed present, and vividly imagining their cold, bleak prairie town. --Jack Illingworth
From Publishers Weekly
Canadian writer Vanderhaeghe ( Man Descending ) here examines the alienation plaguing three generations of a stiff-necked provincial family. In the late 1950s, widow Vera Miller returns home to her elderly father Alec in Saskatchewan after an absence of 17 years. Her teenage son Daniel has been getting out of hand--he is the cause of their homecoming. Once bitter because her father forced her to quit school to care for her younger, motherless brother Earl, proud Vera now takes a job as a movie usher while her son struggles to make friends and turns to his increasingly dotty grandfather for comfort. Daniel learns from Alec that Earl, whose whereabouts are unknown to his sister, died some years ago of meningitis while hospitalized for a mental breakdown. Told in alternating voices and flashbacks, the narrative does not always hang together, and skimpy characterization sometimes renders Vera, the novel's emotional center, shrill and unsympathetic. However, the author's skillful depiction of the growing relationship between Daniel and Alec is warm and real, as is the gradual breakdown of barriers between father and daughter. The novel ultimately succeeds as a quiet, moving story of family forgiveness.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Please read this book...,
By shannon miller (Vancouver BC Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Homesick (Hardcover)
Without going into the actual storyline too deeply, I will only say that this book is beautiful and sad and I think accurately portrays the conflicting feelings of people who love and resent their family members. The main character in the book is Vera, who has left her father and disabled brother in Saskatchewan to forge a new life for herself in Toronto and ends up returning feeling not quite defeated but definitely weathered. Her relationships with her son and her aging father are complicated and recognizable and the ending was surprising as the past comes back at first to hurt and then to heal. I grew up in Saskatchewan and many familiar characters of the small town are present in the story...it is worth reading if for no other reason than to visit the prairie landscape, but the characters will pull you in as well.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Exquisitely Written Coming of Age Novel,
This review is from: Homesick (Paperback)
This goes down for me as Guy Vanderhaeghe's best novel and as one of the best Canadian novels of all time. That is high praise indeed given the fine quality of writing in this country. It is a poignant and beautifully written coming of age story. Vanderhaeghe breathes life into his characters and in particular into Daniel and Alec.Together they form the emotional centre of hope in this novel, spreading healing growth into their own lives as well as that of Vera, mother to Daniel and emotionally estranged daughter to Alec. It does remind me somewhat of W. O. Mitchell's Who Has Seen the Wind, and aspects of Sinclair Ross' writing, but it has a different quality of fresh light on both the Western Canadian setting and the intricacies of growing up. This should have won the Governor General's Award for Fiction. I much preferred it to his later works The Englishman's Boy and The Last Crossing in terms of subject matter.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews) 5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Please read this book...,
By shannon miller - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Homesick (Hardcover)
Without going into the actual storyline too deeply, I will only say that this book is beautiful and sad and I think accurately portrays the conflicting feelings of people who love and resent their family members. The main character in the book is Vera, who has left her father and disabled brother in Saskatchewan to forge a new life for herself in Toronto and ends up returning feeling not quite defeated but definitely weathered. Her relationships with her son and her aging father are complicated and recognizable and the ending was surprising as the past comes back at first to hurt and then to heal. I grew up in Saskatchewan and many familiar characters of the small town are present in the story...it is worth reading if for no other reason than to visit the prairie landscape, but the characters will pull you in as well.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of Canada's Best,
By Jim Priebe - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Homesick: A novel (Hardcover)
The story is a model of conflict between generations. Vera, the protagonist, headstrong daughter, wonderful mother, seargant!, good wife can be admired and detested, depending on the scene. But she is one of the great characters of Canadian fiction. Alec, the grandfather, will be mainly disliked for his habits and assumptions about women, but he can be understood as well. Daniel, son and grandson, will be liked by almost all, even though he has no outstanding "manly" qualities, he loves his grandfather, and is loyal to the end. Characterization marks great fiction. Here it is.
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