Knute is a twenty-four-year-old single mother who returns home to Algren with her daughter, Summer Feelin' to look after her father Tom, who has suffered a heart attack. Hosea Funk, a friend of Tom's and the mayor of Algren has a lot on his mind. The prime minister has promised to pay a visit to whichever town in Canada has the smallest population. Algren has held this position for some time but recent baby booms and returning families, like Knute, threaten to tip Algren over the magic 1500. As Knute is reunited with Max, SF's father, and Hosea finds himself compromised by his own additions to the population count, we find ourselves drawn into the warm, intimate heart of this funny, feel-good novel. First published in Canada in 1998, now being put back in print all over the world following the success of "A Complicated Kindness", "A Boy of Good Breeding" is a funny, warm-hearted novel about families which have been split up but are inexorably drawn back together.
Full of all the usual charming Miriam Toews touches, it's pretty clear that this is an early-career novel. Certainly enjoyable - funny, irreverent, charming, entirely its own thing - but hard to rate too highly when compared to some of her later work.
