David Macfarlane

A sensuous, heartbreaking novel about art, beauty, and the choices we make that define us for life In 1968 a young man travels to Paris, where a series of unlikely events take him to a tiny village in Italy—and to the one great love of his life. A marble merchant meets a couple on their honeymoon, introducing them to the sensual beauty of Carrara. An Italian woman arrives in Canada to find the father she never knew. A terrible accident in a marble quarry changes the course of a young boy's life and, ultimately, sets in motion each of these stories, which David Macfarlane masterfully shapes into a magnificent whole. Oliver Hughson falls in love with wild, bohe-mian Anna over the course of one glorious summer in Italy. Bound by a sense of responsibility to his adoptive parents back home in Canada, however, he leaves her, an act he will regret for the rest of his life. Narrated by the daughter he never knew he had, The Figures of Beauty is a love story of mythic proportions. Through luck, fate, and great good fortune, Oliver found the one place and the one woman he should never have left. This is the story of his trying to find his way back.

A Novel

The Figures of Beauty

gourd art

Beyond the basics

When the worst that can happen, happens, the only useful lesson is the knowledge that it can. That's the take-away: a world can actually end, time can actually run out, sadness can prevail. But I didn't know that then . . . From one of Canada's most celebrated writers and the author of the classic memoir The Danger Tree comes an occasionally hilarious, sometimes heart-breaking meditation on love, memory, and the fathomless depths of grief. Likeness is a multi-generational story told through the vehicle of a painting, a portrait of Macfarlane by the well-known Canadian artist, John Hartman. The painting has ended up unexpectedly, temporarily, and enormously in Macfarlane's living room. He looks at it—a lot. It's hard to avoid. To Macfarlane's surprise, the painting becomes a portal—not only into his own past, but into his father's, too. Through these two histories is woven the present—one dominated by illness. Macfarlane's son undergoes treatment for leukemia during the time the painting hangs in the family living room. Blake is a young man rich in creative possibility. There is music to be composed. There are films to be made. But Blake's future is as circumscribed by fate as his father's was wide open. A tragic difference, eloquently noted. Likeness can be very funny. But it is also inescapably, achingly sad. A book of transcendent beauty, Likeness demonstrates the power of memory to transform the tragic into the precious and profound.

Fathers, sons, a portrait

Likeness

Likeness: A Memoir

George Cohon

You might think that an autobiography by the senior chairman of McDonald's in Canada and Russia would be a modestly boastful, ho-hum business story of expansion and board-room debates, wrapped in some nice reminiscences about his family. You would be very wrong. Because this is George Cohon's autobiography, and George Cohon ("Call me George, please!") is not an ordinary man...not in his approach to business and not in his approach to telling his life story. It's true that George Cohon is one of the most successful businessmen of his generation and that he's also one of the most colourful. But the man you'll meet in the pages of "To Russia With Fries is considerably more complex than that description suggests. Here, you'll encounter a man who not only dreamed the impossible dream of opening a McDonald's restaurant in the heart of the Soviet Union (of all places), but had the patience, the persistence, and above all the good humour to navigate the maze of obstacles set in his course by a scornful communist bureaucracy. You'll meet a man whose heart is bigger than his assets (he's donating all the royalties from this book to charity); a man with a serious sense of fun, who loves (and is frequently on the receiving end of) practical jokes; a man whose life so far has been extraordinary by any standard. You'll discover a man who is a natural and creative entrepreneur and an acknowledged expert on starting a business in Russia. He's been there and done that - long before the crash of the Iron Curtain. From a man who can think and do six things at once (he's been told he has a mind like a butterfly), comes a very lively and hugely entertaining story that has universal appeal.

To Russia with Fries

A haunting novel about love experienced and love remembered that is also an unforgettable celebration and evocation of the brief beauty of a northern summer. Summer Gone is about that moment when everything stops. Like skilled canoeists, we briefly hold a perfect balance - poised between innocence and experience, life and death, discovery and loss, the promise of spring and the sadness of autumn - and we believe, foolishly, that those perfect days will last forever. Set among the islands and lakes of "cottage country", this major first novel from one of Canada's premier writers explores the stories of three generations of lost summers. But Summer Gone is primarily the story of a divorced father and a young son separated by the silence of estrangement, and how during one extraordinary night on an ill-fated canoe trip the silence is broken. Yet, as the novel unfolds, tragedy looms over father and son in ways they could never have imagined, and leads to the book's gripping and startling conclusion. Summer Gone is an exquisite novel, beautifully written and powerfully told.

Summer Gone

David Macfarlane’s Summer Gone introduces a writer of incandescent literary skill and beautifully evokes the sometimes painful relationship between father and son. When Bay Newby is twelve he is sent north for the first time, and he falls in love with the life of ritual, beauty, and stark privilege of summer camp. Then the death of his baby sister calls him home, and it will be twenty-three years before his next “perfect summer.” The summer he spends with his young son will contain loss also, but also discovery and redemption. Summer Gone is a novel of layered experience, of life, death and love as seen through the eyes of a young boy as he grows into a wiser–and more haunted–man.

Nancy M. Lang

A glimpse into a way of life that is disappearing by Giller nominee and winner of the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award.They came by rail and by steamer, from Rochester, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Hamilton, and Toronto. They came to an island retreat on the windswept shores of Georgian Bay to escape the summer heat and to enjoy beautiful scenery and bracing air. And, of course, to fish. There, to meet them on the stone stairs leading to the gracious veranda, was Hamilton Davis, the enterprising American who built the Ojibway Hotel in 1906. One hundred years later, with its weathered shingles, its expansive dock, its stately tower, the Ojibway is still therethe hub of a remarkable summer community. Its the kind of place that elsewhere, often, has been allowed to disappear.David Macfarlane chronicles the history of this beloved hotel and tells more than just a story. He offers a glimpse into a way of life that is disappearing and tells the story of a community committed to preserving the focal point of its past. For all those who understand the beauty and bittersweet brevity of a northern summer, At the Ojibway: 100 Summers on Georgian Bay is a book to be treasured.

100 Summers on Georgian Bay

At the Ojibway

Katherine Young

This collection of appropriate wedding toasts includes extolling the virtues of family to praising the bride's beauty.

David Macfarlane

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