A Boy of Good Breeding

April 24, 2006
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.

The success of A COMPLICATED KINDNESS has spurred interest in Toews's previous work. In this 1998 novel, the mayor of Algren, Manitoba, is determined to keep the population at precisely 1,500 in order to win the distinction of being Canada's smallest town, which includes a visit from the prime minister. The original novel is brief, so this short abridgment doesn't cut the heart out of it, and Ruth McIntosh clearly gets the mix of laugh-out-loud humor and poignant moments that Toews writes so well. Some of her male voices, however, make the characters sound more dim-witted than the author intends, a quirk that detracts from an otherwise good narration of an entertaining novel. D.B. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine