Description

Winner of the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour

A book to be relished by lovers of such works as The Glass Castle Dont Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight and Angelas Ashes

Everything readers love about consummate storyteller and beloved bestselling novelist Wayne Johnstons work is on full display in Jennies Boy incredible characters brilliant language and a deep sense of place

Wayne Johnstons family his mother father and three brothers were always on the move The year he turned eight the most memorable year of an unusual childhood they found themselves occupying a wreck of a house in the community his mother Jennie was from Goulds Newfoundland was not so much a place as a scattering of homes along an unpaved road

Everyone knew him as Jennies boy and his tiny ferocious mother felt judged for Waynes sickly skinny condition he had to spend much of his time in a bed on wheels that was moved from room to room While his brothers went off to school Wayne passed his days with his witty eccentric maternal grandmother Lucy whose son Leonard had died at the age of seven and whose photo stood alongside a statue of the Blessed Virgin

Jennies Boy recalls a boyhood full of pain laughter tenderness and the kind of wit for which Newfoundlanders are known By that wit and by their love for each other so often expressed in the most unloving ways he and they survived