Jennie's Boy is a funny and candid memoir about childhood in Newfoundland — read an excerpt now
Wayne Johnston's memoir will be championed by Linwood Barclay on Canada Reads 2025
Jennie's Boy is a memoir that recounts a six-month period in Wayne Johnston's chaotic childhood, much of which was spent as a frail and sickly boy with a fiercely protective mother. While too sick to attend school, he spent his time with his funny and eccentric grandmother Lucy and picked up some important life lessons along the way.
Jennie's Boy will be championed by writer Linwood Barclay on Canada Reads 2025.
The great Canadian book debate will take place on March 17-20. This year, we are looking for one book to change the narrative.
The debates will be hosted by Ali Hassan and will be broadcast on CBC Radio One, CBC TV, CBC Gem, CBC Listen and on CBC Books.
You can read an excerpt from Jennie's Boy below.
"Well," Jennie said at dinnertime near the end of November, "as of tomorrow, Wayne is going to be spending as much time at Lucy's as he does here."
Dad sniffed but said nothing.
The next morning, Craig helped me wheel the bedmobile across the road and into Lucy's porch, then lit out for school. I pushed it past the door, which Lucy had left open for me, as had always been her habit. I found her in the kitchen, sitting at the large, round wooden table that she and Ned had been given by their children as a twenty- fifth anniversary present, a cup of tea in front of her.
"There he is with his contraption," she said. "You're like the sick in the Bible who carry their pallets around with them."
She got up and crossed the kitchen floor, put her hands on my shoulders and looked down at me.
"Do I look like I've been sick?" she said.
She didn't, so I shook my head.
"You look like you are sick," she said. "Mind you, if you didn't, I'd think there was something wrong with you."
Lucy's eyes were as dark as burnt raisins. Her eyebrows were almost as dark, but her hair was white and had been since she was forty, mid-length and curled under at the sides. She wore a wine-coloured housecoat- length cardigan, unbuttoned, over a beige, wrinkled dress that hung down almost to her slippers.
We began the day as we had each day I had ever spent at her house, with her making me a glass of Quik.
We began the day as we had each day I had ever spent at her house, with her making me a glass of Quik. She spooned the chocolate powder into a glass, filled it partway with water and put ice cubes in it.
I drank without pausing to breathe while she watched with wonder. Ice-cold Quik was the only thing I was always able to keep down, though it was sometimes a struggle. Jennie never bought it, saying it was too expensive.
"Stop," Lucy said after I'd had about three gulps. She took the glass from me, put it in the fridge and put a saucer on top. She would ration it out to me, three gulps at a time, for the rest of the day. It was the only thing she would serve me, because I could never manage lunch.
"There must be something very special in Quik if someone as picky as you can stomach it," Lucy said. "Still, at that wedding feast in the Bible where Christ changes the water into wine when they run out, He wouldn't have made much of an impression if He'd gone round spooning Quik into everybody's glass, even though it would have been a miracle because there was no Quik back then. A miracle per se is not enough. It has to be something good. If all He'd known how to perform were miracles that made things worse, He would have been hard put to find twelve apostles for the Last Supper. That's a sin for me."
She crossed herself, bowed her head and mumbled a prayer, then said, "So, what's the news from home?"
I told her what Dad and Jennie talked about during the housewarming party. She said they shouldn't make fun of the house. Maybe it wasn't a palace, she said, but it would do until our palace became available, which might be a while because of the long waiting list for palaces in Newfoundland.
Maybe it wasn't a palace, she said, but it would do until our palace became available, which might be a while because of the long waiting list for palaces in Newfoundland.
I told her Dad had said something about a winter palace in Russia and asked where Russia was. She said she was fairly certain that Russia's location was the same as it had been since my father read about it in some book. It was probably farther from Newfoundland than Nova Scotia, which was as far from home as my father had ever been.
Unable to think of any other way to stand up for Dad, I reminded her that he spoke Latin. She said not unless he had picked it up from palling around with priests, which was unlikely because Father McGettigan had been trying and failing for years to find someone to go bowling with. "Your father remembers bits and pieces of Latin that he learned in school from teachers who remembered bits and pieces of Latin that they learned in school. That chain goes all the way back to when, for some reason, everyone spoke Latin."
She didn't know why priests had to learn Latin, but she was glad they weren't singing the Mass in Latin anymore, because it made for a nice change to understand what they were saying, even though they sang just as badly in English as they had in Latin. She said that Christ would have suffered more if, instead of making Him endure the crucifixion, God had made Him listen to Father McGettigan singing about it.
She crossed herself.
Excerpted from Jennie's Boy by Wayne Johnston. Copyright © 2022 1310945 Ontario Inc. Published by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.
