A Boy of Good Breeding Miriam Toews Faber & Faber, 256pp, £10.99 1582433402
Welcome to Algren, possibly Canada's smallest town and home to some of the most idiosyncratically named characters in literature. The arrival of Knute and her daughter Summer Feelin' throws mayor Hosea Funk into a frenzy - if he can keep the population at an even 1,500, he will be rewarded with a visit from Canada's prime minister, the man who, according to Funk's mother, is the father he never knew. But then she was a closet alcoholic who occasionally performed handstands on the kitchen table.
The story is part farce, part family saga. Funk dashes to and from the hospital, gleefully adding old Leander Hamm to his "possibly dying" list while fretting over the size of Virginia Epps's pregnant stomach ("Darnit, he thought, that's gotta be twins" - it's triplets). Meanwhile, Knute rekindles her relationship with Summer Feelin's father.
Miriam Toews has a gift for an unusual turn of phrase ("Hosea's mind almost capsized . . ."; "the snow fell like chunks of warm cake"), but the tone is too often self-consciously charming. Knute's story feels incidental compared to Hosea's, and some of the more wilfully offbeat characters remain one-dimensional. None the less, it is hard to resist Toews's generous sense of humour and the book's amiable eccentricity.
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