Pure Spring

by Brian Doyle

Overview

In the sequel to the award-winning Boy O'Boy, it's spring in post-World War II Ottawa and Martin O'Boy has finally found a true home with Grampa Rip. Martin's also found a job, working for the Pure Spring soft drink company. Best of all, he's in love with beautiful Gerty McDowell.

But everything's not perfect. Martin lied to kindly Mr. Mirsky, Pure Spring's owner, to get the job. Grampa Rip's brain increasingly goes missing. There's that mysterious, yet oddly familiar, man in the park. There are also Martin's memories, the sudden appearance of famed Soviet defector Igor Gouzensko, and Martin's shady boss, Randy. And worst of all, Randy is robbing Gerty's grandfather, and he's forcing Martin to be his accomplice. Martin's happiness, sense of duty, and love for Gerty collide. Can he find his way through these dire developments?

Brian Doyle's fast-paced plot and vivid characterizations, along with the lively colloquial dialogue and period detail, create a rich historical portrait that confirms the author's place as a master storyteller.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781554980338
Publisher:	Groundwood Books Ltd
Publication date:	04/01/2007
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	160
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	11 - 14 Years

About the Author

Brian Doyle is the award-winning author of many beloved children's books. He lives in Chelsea, Quebec.

Editorial Reviews

From one of Canada's premier wordsmiths comes a smart, stand-alone sequel to the award winning Boy O'Boy (2004). Pure Spring is not only the name of the soft-drink company where 15-year-old Martin O'Boy is employed, it is also the time of the year that envelops this literary novel like a character. Set in Ottawa in the 1950s, the story focuses on the warm, tender relationship between Martin and his guardian Grandpa Rip, an elderly man who is wise and kind but whose mind is beginning to unravel. Martin's present-day, first-person narration is interspersed with flashbacks written in the second-person that reveal the fate of his abusive, alcoholic father, depressed mother and mentally compromised twin brother. Like many multifaceted young-adult titles, this has some hiccups in the plotting but it never feels too busy. This is due in large part to Doyle's wonderful sense of humor and his spare, eloquent style. In the end, Martin defeats a scary workplace villain, wins a pretty girl and even aids a former Russian spy. (Fiction. YA)

Kirkus Reviews

Pure Spring is a remarkable interlace of tragedy, comedy, romance and even high adventure. It's a blend that only Doyle can mix - a story that's quick-paced and accessible, engages even reluctant readers, and has literary genius and human wisdom at its heart.

Toronto Star

As always, Doyle rounds out the grimness with comedic scenes, balancing tragedy and pain with touching descriptions of the dizzying first love between Martin and Gerty McDowell...Doyle's gentle, affectionate touch makes for a story that ultimately goes down as sweet as a Pure Spring Honee Orange soft drink.

STARRED REVIEW Horn Book

With his straightforward and uninflected compact sentences, Martin reads like a Hemingway narrator, but one of a tender and hopeful mind and an abiding interest humankind despite his setbacks.

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

Brian Doyle continues to create characters to love and situations that cause tears to flow, through laughter and sorrow. He is a gifted writer whose work belongs in every library...school and public. His stories beg reading aloud in classrooms everywhere.

Brandon Sun

...timeless...

Reviewers of Young Adult Literature

This is Brian Doyle at his finest: compassionate and tough, in complete control of lucid prose that neither gets in the way nor gives away too much....tenderly hopeful yet also realistic. This is a marvelous read.

STARRED REVIEW Quill & Quire

...a triumphant return...complete with a sparkling array of characters and a story bubbling with drama and tension...Pure Spring is a case of pure pleasure.

Books in Canada

His singular writing style and finely developed characters are a delight to know. Yet Doyle does not neglect the raw and sometimes painful events of childhood in his warm and funny narrative.

Language Arts

...Doyle's writing is to be savoured....Pure Spring is superbly done. Highly Recommended.

CM Magazine

Doyle is a first-class writer in every sense of the word. For those who can think back to circa 1950, he's brought it all vividly to life again. For the in-betweens who can't, this book is better than a history lesson. It's highly recommended.

Guardian

The pace and the easy to read narrative, while challenging the reader, is also chatty, humourous, and comfortable.

Resource Links

Like [Boy O'Boy], it's invested with a sense of innocence, is rich in period detail, and is redolent of Doyle's nostalgia for the good old days...Martin and his Grandpa Rip are engaging characters, and Doyle fans will welcome his latest effort.

Booklist

It's a delightful story and a funny one, narrated by Martin, but other, darker story strands flow beneath and in and out of this narrative stream...Which is not to say that darkness prevails in Pure Spring. Rather, Martin does and, it must be said, so does Doyle, Brian. Once again, he's spun a marvelous tale, weaving light and dark into a multifaceted gem of a book, in which the eccentric cast of characters...is quite capable of inducing both tears and laughter.

Globe and Mail