The Canning Season

My 9 year-old and I read this book together. It is wonderful, touching, funny, and fairly sophisticated. I must warn you that if you are upset by curse words and unplanned pregnancy, then this book will upset you. However, it is a great story about Ratchet's summer with her elderly aunts in Maine. There is no sugar-coating of adult subjects, but rather honest treatment of them from a child's perspective.

If the premise of the book sounds good to you, then I guarantee you will enjoy it. The tale is whimsical and meaningful, a rare combination. Though, I am not really certain the appropriate age group for the book, as an adult I thoroughly enjoyed it. Ignore the negative reviews unless you, like the nay-sayers, are prudish and uninspired, then simply skip this little gem.

When Ratchet's neglectful mother ships her off to her great aunts' house for the summer, she isn't sure what to expect. Especially when the great aunts, PenPen and Tilly, are twins who haven't gone farther than the post office from their mansion in the boonies of Maine since they were teenagers.When Harper, an obnoxious but lovable teen, is accidentally dropped off because her guardian thought their house was an orphanage, yet another humorous and heart warming twist.Rich with dry humour and sparkling wit, full of eccentric characters, The Canning Season will make you laugh out loud, or chuckle quietly to yourself at the absurdity of the situations in the book. The characters take silly things completely seriously and the combination of events throughout the course of the novel are guaranteed to make you smile.Don't be turned off by the childish looking cover. This is a hilarious novel that everyone will enjoy, from old ladies just like PenPen and Tilly to their teenage grandchildren.

I loved Polly Horvath's newest novel The Canning Season. For the short-attention-span reader, Horvath may be a bit too thoughtful,a bit too cerebral, but for those of us who love a creative inventive writer whose words and images are always wholly original and surprising, this is a great book. Pen-Pen and Tilly are characters in the best Roald Dahl sense, carved a bit from reality and even more from fantasy. Still, I find a bit of many people in both of Ratchet's lovable aunts and am grateful that in a time when many kids have nowhere to turn, the aunts seem to be there for all of us.And Ratchet! How can anyone not love and admire a girl so sturdy she can withstand the winds of a horrendous mother and still have some affection for her. Polly Horvath knows that kids are stronger and more resilient than we give them credit for being, and they can weather crises without teams of people intervening.I had great fun reading The Canning Season and am having an even better time remembering it. That, it seems to me, is the true test of a great book.

" 'How can we have opinions if we have no idea what you're talking about?' asked Penpen gently." 'You gals ought to keep abreast of things,' said Mr. Feebles." 'Why?' asked Tilly grumpily. 'What good does it do you? It seems to me, from what you've been telling us, that everyone these days knows everything about everyone and the split second it happens, too. What do they do with all this information? What does it get them? It just clutters up their peaceful quiet time. It seems to me from what you've been describing, nobody has peaceful quiet time anymore. Television, bah! Radio, bah! Newspapers, magazines, bah, bah! Sounds like the world is running off half-cocked, people getting zapped with their little hits of information. Needing it every day. Zap, zap, zap. Well, deliver me. Contagious. Like hoof-and-mouth disease. I hope you're not contaminated. Don't go trekking it all over our property.'" 'Very funny,' said Mr. Feebles. 'You're a queer couple of ladies, is what you are.'" 'Yes, yes,' said Tilly, 'those queer Menuto women. I know all about it. Now, you drive gently on those rutted roads and don't go breaking those blueberry jars.' " Changes just keep creeping up on us. "And Penpen's eyes welled up as she realized that Tilly was no longer a young girl, as if seeing her white kinked hair and wrinkles and suddenly realizing what they meant. That old age had come and what had seemed like an interesting diversion--the first few gray hairs, the stooping body--wasn't just a pleasant novelty. They weren't going back; they weren't ever going back. Their youth, their youth, was gone. It was as if, unwitnessed, out here, safe in the woods, they should have been out of time as well. If no one had seen their passing, they shouldn't have passed. She wondered if Tilly, lying upstairs alone, was suddenly as aware of it as she was." THE CANNING SEASON is a complex dichotomy of age and youth, of selfish and nurturing adults, of world-shrinking technology and isolation, and of two teenage girls, Rachet and Harper, who are fortunate enough to land on the doorstep of "those queer Menuto women." What is so fascinating is seeing how Penpen and Tilly--twin nonagenarians--share a renaissance, despite their failing health, while the two teenage girls come of age in the unusual household, the old mansion on an isolated coast in Maine where Tilly and Penpen have spent their entire lives. Aside from the story's motherhood theme, the book is nonjudgmental in its approach to human existence and different lifestyles. "Penpen said that living things were all critical mass, the definition of critical mass being the amount of fissionable material required to sustain a chain reaction. She tossed some weeds on the compost and said that people didn't like to see things rotting in the garden but there had to be all things to be growth. She told Rachet this over and over, and the things that someone repeats to you over and over you tend to remember." Rachet, the first adolescent