Sufferance: A Novel by Thomas King

Sufferance: A Novel Reviews

• 
  Wanda Pedersen

  Thomas King recently claimed that this is his final novel. If that's true (and I have no reason to doubt him) I am sad, but he is certainly going out with a bang. I loved this book. It reminded me a lot of his earlier work
  The Back of the Turtle and in some ways of his Thumps DreadfulWater mystery series. I have loved all of those books.
  
  Jeremiah is a great narrator, which is kind of hilarious as he refuses to speak. Like Gabriel, from The Back of the Turtle, he is fleeing corporate America and has ended up back on his ancestral reserve. As usual, King creates a quirky cast of characters to fill the small community. No matter where Jeremiah goes to be alone, someone tracks him down. As part of his final package when he left his corporate job, he was awarded the ownership of the residential school of his mother's reserve. He's been living there, creating rock markers for the cemetery, with only an unnamed cat for company. And the crows.
  
  King seems to have a fondness for cats. In Thumps DreadfulWater’s life, there was Freeway. As more and more people start taking a meddling interest in Jeremiah’s life, this feline gets christened Pancakes. And like Thumps, Jeremiah has his habitual rounds of town, breakfast here, coffee there, home for a nap, work in the graveyard. King manages to comment on the global economy and the immorality of excessive wealth while also examining issues closer to home—lack of clean water and proper sanitation on reserves, mould in homes, unmarked graves behind residential schools, unreliable politicians, lack of affordable housing. It is all just part of the wall paper, while Jeremiah can go stay in the hotel care of his former employer when the residential school gets too crowded.
  
  The crows are the star of the show. They have three simple questions: can we steal it? Can we eat it? Can we shit on it? As Jeremiah observes, not very different from capitalists. They are the chorus to this Greek tragedy (and King does have Greek ancestry).
  
  Mr. King, thank you for hours of reading pleasure. I confess that I hope something else will be the piece of grit that causes you to write another pearl of a novel, but I will be thankful for what you have given us.
  
  Cross posted at my blog:
  
  
  https://wanda-thenextfifty.blogspot.c...
• 
  Lata

  Tom King’s trademark sly humour is on full display in a story about a man, Jeremiah Camp, who’s fled his job working for a very wealthy man, and hides out in a former residential school in a small town, swearing to never speak to anyone. Which he holds to, letting the colourful personalities around him fill in and interpret his silences.
  
  Meanwhile, he’s set himself a task, which he carries out throughout the story, despite all the many intrusions from his former boss’ daughter, who employs him to discover why billionaires around the world are suddenly dying, and the various townspeople who eventually move in with him.
  
  Jeremiah's self-imposed task was already horribly sad, even before the unsurprising real life news of dead and buried children found at the site of former real residential schools. Jeremiah's carefully chiselled headstones for each murdered child is touching and necessary and important, and a good counterpoint to his work scanning through billionaires’ lives.
  
  This book is both funny, and very dark, and though there’s not an obvious wrap-up, I liked this a lot.
• 
  Debbie Zapata

  Aug 31, 7pm ~~ Review asap.
  
  Sep 1, 745pm ~~ My final stand-alone novel by Thomas King. And supposedly the last one he will write. He has said that writing takes more energy than he now has. But we'll see. Even though there are certain aspects of the book that make me wonder if he is sending all of his loyal readers a message. But we'll get to that in a bit.
  
  I did not expect to devour this book as quickly as I ended up doing. But I simply could not put it down.(And I am already looking forward to the day I reread it!) From the first page I was intrigued by our silent narrator Jeremiah Camp and his lifestyle. Why is he living all alone in a huge abandoned school building? Why does he never speak? Not a single word out loud throughout the entire book. How did he manage that?! Even if I could manage to not speak to any other person, I would still mutter to myself at times and to the plants in the garden. I doubt I could ever be as completely silent as Jeremiah was in this story.
  
  One mystery is why was he so silent? He made a decision one day to stop talking and kept it up for years, and probably will for years after the final page in the story. But he was at one time involved with a giant corporation, and there lies a question. When the long corporate arm reaches out to try and ensnare him again, how will he respond?
  
  And what will those crows do? I was expecting some sort of major feathered offensive (a la The Birds), judging by the cover and the way they are always hovering around keeping an eye on things.
  
  Jeremiah was hiding from the world. A desire I have had more than once ever since 2016. But somehow the world never quite lets a person go, have you ever noticed that?
  
  Getting back to my thought in the first paragraph, about why the narrator of this book never actually spoke. Was King telling his readers that he has nothing more to say? That this really is his final book?
  
  I know I am reading a lot into things, but I wonder if anyone with such strong opinions as King has, and the ability to express them in creative ways, could ever really stop writing?
  
  I guess time will tell.
  
  
  
  
  
• 
  Enid Wray

  Thank you Thomas King for once again brightening up my day. For the past couple of weeks nothing I’ve read has made my cheeks hurt… so I turned to you looking to break that streak… and you came through for me.
  
  I am going to avoid spoilers in this review - so my comments will be more vague than I’d like - because this is a book you want to read… This is classic King… exactly what you’ve come to expect without being either repetitive or derivative. Smart. Biting. Funny (crows playing Marco Polo is my favourite, or the guy caught looking like he voted for the NDP). Simultaneously subtle, and not so subtle. He challenges the litany of sins held against the Indigneous population, and skewers the living conditions on reserve, as well as the social and economic situation that is the reality for far too many Indigenous peoples. He questions the value of reconciliation - likening it to just another drug like religion - and the goals of the education system, but highlights the need for generosity, and especially community and remembrance.
  
  As always, it is the characters that keep things moving and keep you reading. I’m having a hard time figuring out who my favourite is in this one… there are so many to choose from... Although I think my vote goes to either - or both - of Nutty and Lala.
  
  Also, as you come to expect from any King novel, there are the references back to himself and his own work - which from most other authors just comes off as a conceit that bugs me to no end but with King they are always appropriate. My favourite here was the reference to the CBC radio show that gave away authentic Indian names… ‘but CBC cancelled it’ (p245). (Have I mentioned lately how I - still to this day - miss my weekend fix of Dead Dog Cafe (only every time I review a Thomas king title…)).
  
  The plot in this one is over the top ridiculous - I’ll stay entirely mum about it - but, at the same time, all too real… and that, of course, is what makes it work so well as satire.
  
  Thank you, again, Thomas King… and also to the publisher and Edelweiss for making this early digital review copy available to me.
• 
  Robyn

  I have mixed feelings about this book. I didn't like it as much as I expected to, being a Thomas King novel, but after finishing it yesterday it is taking up considerable space in my brain (being a Thomas King novel). I would call it a 3.5 but I'm rounding up because I think that the more I sit with the story the more I will appreciate it. Definitely not a "fly through and forget about it" type of story. I did find it a bit slower moving toward the ending, and I am still quite confused about the resolution - no spoilers but if you read it you may get why I don't understand why ___ did ___ if ___. Unless I completely missed an important plot point which is entirely possible.
  
  I hope my book clubbers like it but I suspect it's one that people will be mixed on. At the same time, there will be no shortage of things to discuss.
• 
  Virginia

  The school has its own graveyard. Seventy-seven graves. Each marked with a wood cross. Originally, the crosses were white, but now the wood is grey and weathered, the graves all but forgotten. … I think of my efforts as a reconciliation project, even though I don’t believe in reconciliation any more than I believe in religion.

  Jeremiah Camp certainly foretold this one: the day I started reading this book, the mass graves of 215 aboriginal children were located on the grounds of a residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia on Canada’s west coast. Not a surprise to anyone since thousands of children disappeared from these schools over the 160+ years they were in operation in Canada. I was relieved to see this book come out because of the elegiac nature of Thomas King’s last book Indians on Vacation; it read like a farewell to, well, everything. (And I just found out that it has been awarded the 2021 Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour, a major Canadian literary award.) Sufferance was a wonderful, funny, painful, hopeful read. Not a book to rush through looking for the jokes, though, although there were plenty of lovely lines and deceptively light-hearted chatter. It’s all entertaining, it’s all relevant, and it all hurts. There are also very astute observations about political corruption as well.

  What is it about public office that turns decent people into political cartoons?

  I guess that’s one thing we understand in Canada - politicians, every stinkin’ one, are all heart and sincerity until they get into office, and then they develop corruption like a poison oak rash. It goes along with their custom-made desk chairs and the name plates on their doors.
  
  The 215 little bodies are only the beginning. Things are changing. As Jeremiah says,

  All the fires in the world will not burn history clean.
• 
  Joel Hill

  I actually finished this a while ago and forgot to update Goodreads.
  
  This is honestly such a hard book to boil down to a simple number. I found the plot to be slow and maybe even a little uninteresting, however the plot was almost irrelevant though since most of what was interesting in Sufferance was Jeremiah's perspective on the world. He had cynical and sarcastic view that I found to be mostly really funny but also incredibly depressing at times. I didn't care what happened next, but I was always looking forward to seeing what Mr. Camp thought of it.
  
  Not my favorite book and I might hesitate to recommend it to others, but I REALLY want to read more from Thomas King.
• 
  Stephanie

  Four stars is a generous rating - I gave it a bump because i enjoyed it more than I expected to. It was a bit of a romp with an unusual premise and hard to put down!
  
  That said, the second half fell flat for me. The ending seemed over simplistic and rushed. Plus the narrative style grated after awhile. The juxtaposition of wry internal observations of mundane things with intense things going on around the narrator is a device that should be used sparingly at best IMO.
• 
  areez

  dnf at 50%???
• 
  Chantel

  I think, perhaps, I missed the gist of the excitement & mystery in this novel. King is a very good writer but he has a very specific writing style & it requires me to be in a very specific mood to read his books. Thankfully, I was in just such a mood when I decided to read this one. I will therefore advise anyone who is thinking of reading this book that the flow is jumbled; the main character does not talk, we read his thoughts & these are often placed in between other people's dialogues. I didn't find this to obstruct the flow of the story but, again, I was in a specific mood & was able to appreciate it.
   
  This is a story about a man who sees patterns. Possibly because life is a very heavy task to endeavour, he stops speaking. There were times when I wondered how people around him, especially those who didn't know him, made their way to conclusions whereupon he had no impact in leading them there. We often read of strangers making conversation with him without any input & without knowing that he had chosen a vow of silence. I can't speak for everyone but I might find myself being a bit perturbed if the person I was speaking with never said anything & was always staring off at, literally anything else, while I was speaking.
  
  Though I appreciated that his peers didn't push him on the speaking issue, I did feel a bit uncomfortable with their pushing his physical boundaries. They invite themselves to live where he resides without asking & I acknowledge that culturally this is not something you need to ask of people who care about you. However, as I am very similar to our main character I felt stifled.
  
  I can't say that I really saw the purpose in everyone needing to move into the school. Perhaps, are we meant to read this scenario as being that those who put people into the school & then decided to take them out, forced those same people to return again when they made their communal life unbearable? I chose to see it that way. We are perpetually stuck in a cycle whose axis turns by the actions of others & so are others, stuck in a cycle whose axis turns by our actions, etc. The sufferance of life; the entirety we carry with us throughout the years whether we speak it or not.
   
  I appreciate those who say that this book was timely as an unmarked grave was recently dug up & 215 children were found inside but, let me say that this story is always timely because the graves remain there whether or not the powers that be acknowledge them or not.
  
  These things have already happened therefore speaking in a fictional book about black mould & powerless reserves & graveyards filled with children is not only timely because the news highlights it as being so; it's timely because it's real. It was real yesterday, 30 years ago & it will be tomorrow as it is today. I hope that by a variety of readers choosing to learn about such things in a way that might feel less overwhelming, we are not kept in such a cycle as the characters in this book.
   
  I appreciate the tone employed by King throughout this book & would recommend it to others. Do not engage in reading this story thinking that it will be a thriller or a great dark mystery. It explores the realities of a specific community which reflects the realities of many. Overall, I am glad to have read this book. It was not my favourite but, it is one that will reside in the corners of my mind for some time.
• 
  Mary Anne

  A heart-breaking novel about a man who has seen the abyss and feels nothing. His replacing crosses from the graves of a residential school with river stones upon which he carves the dead child's name seems to suggest there is some hope at the end but ...
• 
  Colin Gooding

  The majority of the reason I enjoyed this book is in the prose. There is a really interesting mix of this sort of melancholy tone interspersed with both strange humor and some sinister/forboding moments, all wrapped within a bit of film noir trappings. It almost feels like a few tonal steps away from something like the movie Fargo? It's fascinating to read, even though by the end I thought some of the writing patterns showed themselves a bit too plainly (but were still mostly effective).
  
  I did love the choice to have the POV character never speak. It reminded me of a video game like Half Life or Chrono Trigger, and it added to that noir tone. It also forces the supporting cast to reveal their character a little more freely, I thought it worked extremely well.
  
  The plotting here is very strange as well. It seems like the A plot is a slice of life story of a the struggles of small reserve community, and then the B plot is a grandiose billionaire murder conspiracy. Both are compelling, but I'm not sure that either of them were completely successful. I'm sure there are layers of the allegory I'm missing, but I still wanted to see what would happen next and tore through the last half of the novel, so it certainly worked at some level.
  
  I'll have to add some more Thomas King to my backlog, as this was my first of his and he is clearly a talented writer.
• 
  Jane Mulkewich

  I do love Thomas King and this is one of his best books yet - when I saw him online discussing this book a couple of days ago, he said he thought it was most mature work yet. Once again, King gives a light and humorous touch to huge and deadly issues. This book is about a main character who now lives in a building that was a former residential school, and one of the things he does in the story is to commemorate the childrens’ graves at the school. Tom King has managed to release a book that is so very timely with regards to current events, as people are feeling grief and outrage over the 215 children found in an unmarked grave in Kamloops, and yet that is only one of the reasons to read this book. Memorable characters, that will stay with you for some time to come, and an absurd story that at the same time gets at many truths.
• 
  Ben Rogers

  This was a great read.
  
  Fun and enjoyable, but also had lots of meaning to it.
  Probably my favorite King novel yet!
  
  Would recommend this.
  
  3.9/5
• 
  Peter

  It's been a while since I've enjoyed reading book so much. There's not much action but plenty of social critique in this mystery. Together, the two would normally be a turnoff. But the gentle intolerance of the curmudgeonly and silent narrator is infectious. And irresistible.
• 
  Jay

  I received this book from the publisher. This in no way changes my opinion and all the words below are my own.
  
  4.25 stars
  The other book I've read by King is non-fiction, and I have to say as much as I did enjoy it, I loved his fiction writing even more. Everything just flows so well, you can tell Thomas King is a natural storyteller who has elevated his skill by gifting us with full-length novels. Sufferance is the perfect mix of slice of life and the underlying plot of "is it magic or is he just a really cool guy?". Which is perhaps not a terribly professional way of wording it, but it's true.
  
  While the book really hits on such important topics without making them overdramatized or too real to be compelling in a fictional work, what really carries the story is the characters. Thomas King created a giant cast of characters that he really brought to life with ease. They are real, and interesting and imperfect all at once. I was sad to be done living in their little world when I finished the book.
• 
  Maria

  I was aware of Thomas King's
  The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America and thus interested in listening to Sufferance when it came up in the library's new aquisitions. And I enjoyed it a lot. It's more of a genre type thing. the main character does not speak, which is a really nice device. And the book made me want to learn more about crows. maybe I'll look at
  In the Company of Crows and Ravens.
  
  “When I left the city, I decided I would stop talking. Completely. That was easy enough. I also decided to stop paying attention to what was happening in the world.
  That was harder.
  At the Locken Group, I was paid to collect the flotsam and jetsam of humanity. Collect it. Sort it. Process it. And finally, to squeeze out patterns from the distillate.
  A great many people are fond of saying that information is power.
  It’s not.
  Thomas Locken knew that information by itself was worthless, that the only value was in the patterns that information revealed. Understanding those patterns, being able to predict how and where they would form and the effect they would have, that was power.
  Seeing the patterns. Recognizing their significance. Forecasting. That was my job.”
• 
  Brahm

  I liked Thomas King's writing and will check out some of his other books, but I wasn't wild about this one.
  
  The two plotlines - what was going on at the town and reserve, and what was going on with the Locken Group and the billionaires - didn't quite seem to stick together.
  
  Not a fan of the silent narrator. Maybe I missed a key paragraph but I didn't feel like his vow of silence was well-established, so I felt he was being a bit of a jerk.
  
  Looking forward to discussing with book club!
• 
  Gail Barrington

  Enjoyable as always and such sly humour. We laugh at what hurts the most, a great gift that King has. And what prescience--the tragedy at the residential school in Kamloops was just revealed as I was reading this book. At least in the fictional graveyard, the children had crosses to mark their graves although their names were only saved in the church records. That courtesy was not extended to the 215 children who were buried in Kamloops, nameless and unmourned. The reality overwhelmed the story in this case.
• 
  Joanne

  Another wonderfully witty and insightful novel from Thomas King, this book had me enthralled even with its wild side plot. The characters were wonderful and there were moments of humour where I laughed out loud. His books are always worth spending time with.
• 
  Dolank

  I'm embarrassed to admit that this is my first Thomas King, and now, I want/need to read more. He left me with so many questions, and wanting to know more, wanting the story to continue and follow the side characters of this book.
• 
  Lorraine

  Thomas King always has so much to say and brings out real world issues in humor and great story telling.
• 
  Susan

  "We exist through the sufferance of others."
  
  Jeremiah Camp, the Forecaster for a billionaire, is able to forecast the future and is paid to do so, until he sees too much and decides to essentially run away from society. He goes back to his birthplace, stops talking, has no phone, internet or mail service. He lives alone in an abandoned residential school, filling his time with replacing the crosses on the graves of the children who died while at the school. His only wish is to be left alone. And then the daughter of his previous employer finds him and needs him to forecast yet again because billionaires are dying under mysterious circumstances. Meanwhile, the people who live on the reserve and who refuse to leave Jeremiah on his own, have no liveable homes, no electricity or running water.
  King has said that this would be his last book, but if it is, he is going out with a bang. Lots to grapple with.
• 
  Marise

  Wasn't sure what to expect from this. At first it sounded like a paranormal type mystery, and I was down for that. Instead, I got a book that deals with current issues with aboriginal affairs. A book that deals with prejudice and bigotry that still runs rampant. A book about community, and the lengths some people will go to build or destroy that community. This was the first book I chose to read for the Adult reading program with the Library, and I couldn't be happier to start it with this book. I hope the rest of my picks end up this good.
• 
  Shannon

  Eerily prescient! This story has King's trademark wit and humor with a cast of memorable characters living in the small, fictional town of Gleaming and the nearby Cradle River Reserve somewhere in Ontario. Jeremiah Camp, aka the Forecaster, is the main protagonist, a silent, sensitive and extremely smart Indigenous man who has a gift for identifying patterns in order to predict wider world events. In his past he worked for the Locken Group, a multi-billion dollar corporation, getting paid to make predictions but one discovery is so shocking it scares him into hiding. Gifted the land that is the site of an old residential school, Jeremiah now spends his days living in the abandoned building and working to replace the ubiquitous white crosses of the 77 children buried there, with named stone markers. Both the townspeople and the Locken Group are not content to let Jeremiah live alone in peace, however, and both barge into his life in unexpected ways. King does a great job illustrating the frustrations and poor living conditions faced by the community as they deal with yet another government official making empty promises of improvement. I loved how central the animals in the story were, especially his cantankerous cat and a vindictive murder of crows and the way the community members banded together to thwart outsider interference. A highly entertaining, thought-provoking study of power and privilege - both those that have it and those that don't. This is a must read by a master at the height of his craft.
  
  Favorite quotes:
  "The school has its own graveyard. Seventy-seven graves. Each marked with a wood cross. Originally the crosses were white, but now the wood is grey and weathered, the graves all but forgotten...I think of my efforts as a reconciliation project, even though I don't believe in reconciliation any more than I believe in religion."
  
  "Crows see everything and they remember everything. They can be the best of friends but they do not forget. And they do not forgive."
  
  "Cookies aren't sweets," says Nutty, "cookies are appetizers."
• 
  tinabel

  Unlike any novel I've ever read. Though the subject matter is difficult at times, King doesn't make this important novel seem like work. It is strange and deep and moving and spectacularly original with heartbreakingly beautiful characters you wish you could hang out with in real life. Outstanding.
• 
  Mary Jane Hele

  Love anything Thomas King but ---- Hmmmm- it's about the ending.
• 
  Anne Smith-Nochasak

  Jeremiah Camp has come home – or at least back to the place of his birth. Whether or not it is home is a topic debated on several levels throughout the book. The reader meets a rich array of characters, offered without judgment, in all their humanness. We follow Jeremiah through his encounters with the people of his childhood and his career, with the refreshing introduction of Lala, a special and joyful child who welcomes and loves all.
  
  Thomas King guides us through past and present, enabling us to see and appreciate every aspect of Jeremiah Camp – the lonely and abandoned child, the gifted forecaster sought by billionaires, the outcast and the loner. He is a man who carries a heavy burden. Layer by layer, moment by moment, we are drawn to discover the full impact of that burden, and its consequences.
  
  The author delivers Jeremiah’s story with his usual subtle wit. There are parallel conversations in the local restaurant, in which Florence delivers the news while a separate conversation is carried on at one table. People lecture Jeremiah on one topic, while he holds an inner reflection on another. Somehow, each sheds light on the other. The veiled reference to The Dead Dog Café will be appreciated by the show’s many followers, as will the less veiled reference to the Indian Act: “’In New York City, a man has been arrested for throwing the pages of books off the top of the viewing platform at the Hudson Yards building’…. ‘We should send him the Indian Act,’ says Louis.” (pp. 212f.) There is such irony in the gradual influx of the broken and the helpless into the old residential school building; a patchwork community is formed within the walls that once took away community. I am reminded that the founder of Christianity reached out to the broken and marginalized in his ministry; the residential schools, alas, fostered brokenness and marginalization.
  
  The replacement of the nameless crosses of the school graveyard with stones on which the children’s names are carved is a beautiful gesture. The children are no longer nameless, no longer claimed -- yet rejected -- by a dark institution. They are named, and they are connected.
  It was hard to put this book down, yet hard to think that it is over. I miss Lala now. I miss Nutty Moosonee. They remain with me.