1979: A Novel

by Ray Robertson

It’s 1979 and Tom Buzby is thirteen years old and living in the small working- class city of Chatham, Ontario. So far, so normal. Except that Tom’s dad is the local tattoo artist, his mother is a born-again former stripper who’s run off with the minister from the church where the pet store used to be, and his sister can’t wait to leave town for good. And everyone along his daily newspaper route looks at him a little differently, this boy who’s come back from the dead, who just might be the only one who understands the miraculous, heart-breaking mystery that is their lives.
Set in the year that real newspaper headlines told of North America’s hard turn to the right, 1979 offers a smalltown take on the buried lives of those who almost never make the news, and one boy’s attempt to make sense of it all.

Genres: Fiction, Young Adult, Adult Fiction

265 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 31, 2018

About the author

Ray Robertson is the author of six novels including Moody Food and What Happened Later, a finalist for the Trillium Book Award. He has also published a collection of nonfiction, Mental Hygiene: Essays on Writers and Writing. He is a contributing book reviewer for The Globe and Mail.

Robertson lives in Toronto.

Reviews

[Liana Kreamer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this book! What a trip down memory lane... vinyl albums, North Star running shoes and freezie headaches... I spent my middle years growing up in small-town Ontario, so much of this was intimately familiar.

This novel would be fabulous as a movie. I can totally picture the character vignettes, which were written into the book as the news that should have been reported. These side stories were terrific, which made me willing to shrug off the irritation of interrupted flow from the main narrative.

I’m definitely going to recommend this novel to my dad (he’s going to love it).

On a side note - When I saw that the library had stuck “historical fiction” on the spine, it made me snort. I never realized that growing up in the 70s & 80s would land me in the fossil category.

[Clare · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a big fan of Ray Robertson's writing, and I wanted to like this one more than I did. Possibly because 1979 was the summer of my sixteenth year, and I saw Supertramp at the Kitchener Memorial Auditorium in sweltering heat with pretty much everybody else in town, and spent the rest of it lazing around with my friends -- it was a few months before I would get my first job. It's a summer that's blazed in my memory, so I was naturally drawn to the title, as well as the southwestern Ontario setting. On the whole, I liked it okay. I especially liked the newspaper clippings that expanded on the minor characters in the life of the main character (a paper boy). Too much of it, however, feels like a list of things that happened in the news or in pop culture during that year, awkwardly squeezed into a story. The characters are skilfully drawn and there are moments of magic in the writing, but I think at about a third shorter it would have been a much better book.

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a feeling this is the next generation of archetypal "can lit" novel: a fictional memoir of golden summers and freezing winters in the 1970s and 80s, from the view of pre-teens & teens growing up in quite suburban small cities in southern Ontario. And I'm perfectly OK with this, as novels like "1979" are too close to my own childhood memories to complain about being some sort of cliche. My only complaints with this particular lovely novel are (1) the ending is more of a sudden stop than a conclusion, and (2) the opening story of being lost and resurrected in the sewer doesn't really hold much resonance through the rest of the story. This novel is a trip into the near past that speaks to me very loudly and very clearly.

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a thoughtful book that carries a compelling story but also provides a lot of reflection on the supporting cast. Since I live in Chatham, I delighted in reading this "love story" off sorts of growing up here. But Robertson writes in such a way that anyone who had a childhood in this era can relate to what it means to have actually had a childhood - best friends, playing outside, resolving differences and learning to love education and how it can open doors.

[Ron S · Rating 4 out of 5]

A slice of life for a 13 year old paper boy living in small town south western Ontario. Tom Buzby and his two years older sister live above their father's tattoo shop, after their mother finds Jesus and runs off with a pastor. Nothing much happens in this coming of age story, but it doesn't need to, thanks to Robertson's gifts as a writer that has matured greatly since he touched on similar ground in his 2007 novel, What Happened Later. Having been born and raised in a similar time and place, I can vouch for the verisimilitude of Robertson's portrait of small town SW Ontario circa 1979. It clanged the nostalgia bell pretty hard in my case, but should appeal to anyone that enjoys great subtle writing, and coming of age tales. Raise the roofbeams high, Mr Robertson, bravo!

[Kevin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ray Robertson interrupts his main story with extraneous caesuras, little short stories from the area surrounding Chatham, taking up FAR too much real estate to give the meat of the novel a punch. When I got to the author page and saw his smiling headshot I said to myself, "Yes, this is exactly who I expected to write this book." 1979 is a bit of a bore which someone harkening back to his childhood might have found "necessary" to write about... but at the end of the day, the impression that I leave this novel with is that I should be glad I didn't grow up in Chatham County or the year 1979. The story was sepia-toned and grainy, just like the uninspired cover, title, characters, and plot.

Maybe it will be accessible to those who grew up around this time, but I have a feeling that the majority of high-star rating will come from those aforementioned folks... and the lower ones from us picky, unappreciative millennials. Skip.

[Vivian Zenari · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is a kind of Winesburg, Ohio, set in Chatham, Ontario, in the title year. The first-person narrator, a paper boy, mirrors the main character in Sherwood Anderson's story collection, and the newspaper articles interspersed with the narrator's storytelling substitute for the point of view shifts in Anderson's book. The book heavily parlays 1970s nostalgia, loading on detail that I didn't want to mow through to find out where the book was going. The detail, however, seems to be the book's main obsession, as is the idea of telling stories about the boy's newpaper delivery clients. Though the book has a couple of good moments, overall I wished for something more than what it gave. I preferred Anderson's book because of the flatter style and greater focus on the oddness of the people in his town.

[Nancydrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

vignettes distract from the pace of the story

[Victoria Dempster · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written in such an interesting way that makes light of life's "ordinaries" from a meaningful perspective. A win for Canadian lit!

[Alexandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

My prof wrote this book!!!!! (so cool). Enjoyed even though it was assigned, but some of the newspaper excerpts he wrote in different characters' voices/identities were :/.

[Jenna Caruso · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ray Robertson taught me 1/2 a semester of pride workshop in 4th year creative writing at Your University, so when I saw this book at the library I grabbed it.

There is a beautiful line in there, something to the effect of "Every shoe lost in the road was a tragic poem", in reference to a father who lost his son in a motorcycle accident.

I enjoyed that this was concretely set in South Western Ontario, with many families references even though the story took place 6 years before I was born.

Ultimately, it is a decent slice of life/coming of age story. The main character and supporting characters are will drawn, though in terms of storyline, nothing really happens.

[Marc · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn’t want to report on this book until after I’d met with my book club (1sister & 3 of my brothers). It’s a great book club and all motivated readers.

Ray Robertson writes unapologetically about the backwater little town of Chatham. His references are very specific and bang on Chatham. I didn’t come of age in ‘79 but not much seems different. Having lived in another city before my coming of age in Chatham, I did have more metropolitan references than those available to the young Chatham milieu. My discontents were not very similar to our character in 1979. And I frankly don’t know how general this portrayal would transfer to others.

The book was a pretty boring read like the town he writes about but luckily it was a quick read. I very much liked Robertson’s book David which was also set in Chatham but the story was better written and more universal in appeal IMO.