The book, autobiographical in nature, details Levine's return to Canada after years spent living in England. He boards a boat in England and lands in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He slowly makes his way accross the country describing his stops in Ontario, Quebec and the West. The accounts of his voyages are vivid and nostalgic. Levine's bitterness toward his native country is nothing more than brutal honesty. From Montreal's society to Ontario's small mining towns, Levine's most intriguing descriptions are of the people he meets along the way.
There is no better hook in the book than the line, "I wondered why I felt so bitter about Canada. After all, it was all part of a dream, an experiment that could not come off. It was foolish to believe that you could take the throwouts, the rejects, the human kickabouts from Europe and tell them: Here you have a second chance. Here you can start a new life. But no one ever mentioned the price one had to pay; how much of oneself you had to betray."
If you are not Canadian, don't worry there aren't any Canuck inside jokes that you won't get. After all, I haven't been to most of the places described by Kerouac, but love his books nonetheless.
Norman Levine's Canada Made Me, first published in England in 1958, is a bitter, critical reassessment of the moral and cultural values of Canada. His account of his three-month journey from Halifax to Ucluelet, a fishing village on the west coast, is an unconventional portrait of Canada's underbelly. The book ends with the words: `I wondered why I felt so bitter about Canada. After all, it was all part of a dream, an experiment that could not come off. It was foolish to believe that you can take the throwouts, the rejects, the human kickabouts from Europe and tell them: Here you have a second chance. Here you can start a new life. But no one ever mentioned the price one had to pay; how much of oneself you had to betray.'
Canada Made Me was regarded as so controversial that it did not appear in a Canadian edition until 1979. Critical opinion, however, has slowly swung around to the point the book was recently described in the Globe and Mail as a `laconic classic'. For this new edition Norman Levine has written an introduction which traces the book's publishing history and reputation.