Customer Reviews

Thin Ice: Coming of Age in Canada

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Wanting to know more about Canadian perspectives on the United States, and attracted by quotes indicating that P. J. O'Rourke and Peter Jennings found it very humorous, I bought this book. Unfortunately, I was once again reminded not to attribute too much credit to quotes from reviews printed on a book's cover. This is a far from humorous work; rather, it is a painful read.

McCall's memoir is a bitter reflection on his childhood in Canada. His depiction of the Canada in which he was raised seems to arise from inductive reasoning: since his was a poor, emotionally uncommunicative, and disfunctional family he attributes those same attributes to the entire nation. Since McCall's personal life only took an upturn upon his immigration to the United States in retrospect everything American in his youth was bright, colorful, luxurious and exciting; things from Canada on the other hand were grey, utilitarian, and boring. Americans were fun and vigorous; Canadians dour and laconic.

McCall's memoir constitutes an unrelenting denunciation of his parents' rearing of their children. His mother is depicted as a tragic, downtrodden, alcoholic who withdrew into alcohol as an escape from the burden of six children and a domineering, unsupportive husband. His description of his father is severe: mean, tyrannical, selfish, belittling. The denunciations are so excessive that about two thirds through the book the one wonders whether McCall doesn't regret missing the opportunity to drive a stake through his father's heart. He describes a stark childhood entirely devoid of love, happiness, or material comforts and attributes all his failures and personality quirks and those of his siblings to their upbringing.

This was a hard book to plow through, much less finish. It is a sad, depressing memoir which would have been better kept within the McCall family; the writer makes an apt observation in the beginning of the book when he expresses concern about how his siblings will receive this recollection of their childhood.

I really regret buying this book and the time I invested in reading it. Under no circumstances would I recommend it to others.

Perhaps it is American vs. Canadian sense of humor, (i am in California) but i did not find this book at all funny. It is a poignant description of a dysfunctional family which is descriptive without being overwhelming with pain and sadness. It is a story of survival and not necessarily entertainment

Thin Ice is one of the best books I have ever read. I also grew up in a large, dysfunctional family in southern Ontario in the fifties and sixties with a tyrannical, alcoholic father in a tense, cold emotion-starved environment. It wasn't until I was in therapy many years later for an anxiety disorder that I even realized that my childhood was far from normal, and all the feelings of inadequacy and inferiority I had carried all my life stemmed from my childhood.

Thin Ice was a very painful book for me to read, because it is a tearful, emotional trip back in time, but a journey that was necessary for me to understand what happened to me and to finally stop blaming myself. Thin Ice is also uproariously funny, and I am reading it a second time. I, too, yearned to leave Canada behind and move to the United States. I left Canada over a decade ago to raise our children here and have never looked back. After therapy and Bruce's book I can finally leave it emotionally behind, also.

Canadians get very upset when they are poked fun at, and Bruce does it like a pro. If you are a Pierre Burton nationalist, prepare yourself to be indignant. Bruce "tries to create a time when things were very different indeed - a time when a Canadian, certainly this Canadian, felt himself to be two thirds American, with the other third composed of a grayish ball of chaff: hockey/plaid/butter tarts/earmuffs/CBC/Mounties/toques/wheat/fish/lumber/God Save the King/Queen".

I bought Thin Ice to be entertained and I not only laughed until I cried, I also really cried and gained a priceless insight into my complex childhood and the key to my personality today.

Bruce McCall has a story to tell. He grew up in Canada, at a dynamic time for the USA and a typically slow time for Canada. I was keenly interested to learn this information, but the book falls short. Instead of writing about the dynamic of Canadian life, McCall treats us to boredom.

THIN ICE starts out with some background info on Canadian's norms of calm and restraint. Then we learn their history of loyalty to the British monarch. But then we get a repetition of how boring it was. Movie theatre had nothing to show, tv had nothing to watch, radio had two stations, Canada had no highways, etc. There's nothing interesting in this memoir.

There had to have been some good things about Canada. Isn't Canada the country that gave us great comedians? Didn't Canada give us Neil Young's music? If, according to McCall, Canada had none of the playthings that Americans kids have, then how did he know about them? Were American films an influence? I also wanted to know more about the relationship between the Quebecois and the English-speaking Canadians. But they're only given a slight mention, as migrant farm laborers who are classed as "maurauders." The rest I forget.

I'm not sure how the book ends, because I gave up around page 70.

Buy It!

McCall's wit went twelve rounds with innumerable past tragedies created by his unfathomably selfish and self-destructive parents - and survived, for which the literary equivalent of the Heisman Trophy should be his reward.

The National Lampoon and TNY comic illustrator & satirist sweated out the manuscript for eighteen months (aided by a brother who, amazingly, kept a daily diary for 49 years!), & produced an excellent memoir - which he then forgot to send to his agent, as he relates in his Acknowledgements. Who can not admire someone whose creativity and candor is so seamlessly intertwined, so disarming?

It helps to appreciate this memoir if you have an idea of who Bruce McCall is. The best way of doing that at one stroke is to read his cartoon collection, _Zany Afternoons_, which is out of print. _Thin Ice_ is a tale of a joyless family ruled by a loveless, inconsiderate father, seen from the viewpoint of the artistic child. By all rights, I should dislike this book, as I think giving one's parents the "Mommy Dearest" treatment is ungrateful, unless they were downright abusive. As the psychiatrist said to the centaur, "Stop blaming your parents." Yet he recreates his childhood homes and family climate so winningly that the story overcomes such resistance, and we are transported back with him. All those witty zingers about how dull Canada was are entertaining, too. The book ends just as he is on his way to revive his career in the States. Since that is where, by his own definition, the "good part" of the story lies, let's hope he produces the next installment soon.

As a Canadian coming of age in Canada, with all the small town yearnings of the U.S. in all it's glory, I could certainly relate to Bruce McCall's book, but I would have loved it anyway. I am buying copies for friends.

This book was one of the best i've read in years. Bruce McCall is so great at his craft. he pays attention to every word. Making it impossible to read this book fast. it would not be doing it justice. You need to sit back and savor every single word.