Last Impressions
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Last Impressions
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Narrated by:
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Jason Blicker
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By:
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Joseph Kertes
About this listen
Shortlisted for the 2021 Leacock Medal for Humour
Longlisted for the 2020 Toronto Book Awards
How can you say good-bye forever when you've left an important secret unspoken?
"I'll tell you what I'm going to do," Zoltan said. "When I die, I'll leave my luck to you."
Zoltan Beck is dying. His devoted but long-suffering sons, Ben and Frank, are trying to prepare themselves and their families for Zoltan's eventual departure...but they can't quite bring themselves to believe that the end is really at hand, and neither can Zoltan himself. The head of a family marked by war and tragedy for decades, he "can't stand to be in a room with a miserable person" and has done his best to keep the pain of his refugee past from his beloved children. But as he faces the end of his life, he discovers a heartbreaking secret from the War that will ultimately bring the family together - or irrevocably disrupt it.
Set in both mid-20th century Hungary and contemporary Toronto, this is a deeply moving novel that revels in the energy of its extraordinary characters. It is the story of lost love and newfound connections, of a father and his sons desperately reaching out to bridge an ever-widening gap...even as their time together ebbs away.
©2020 Joseph Kertes (P)2020 Penguin CanadaCritic Reviews
"The great achievement of this novel is that the comedy of the present day story is deepened and darkened by the vein of history flowing beneath it, a history of lost loves and lost lives. Last Impressions will make you laugh out loud and cry out loud. What more could be asked of a book?" (Miriam Toews, award-winning author of Women Talking, A Complicated Kindness, and All My Puny Sorrows)
"Joe Kertes knows of what he writes, and it shines through pristine prose on every page of this moving and thoughtful novel. By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, the story’s vivid and memorable characters wrestle with history, secrets, and shadows that simultaneously strain and sustain a family. Brilliant and masterful." (Terry Fallis, two-time winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour)
"The patriarch Zoltan looms off the page, larger than life and yet heart-breakingly human. Last Impressions is a testament to the ordinary miracle of family and friendship, of loves lost and loves gained, of secrets concealed and hopes restored, set against the sweep of history, at once epic and intimate." (Giller Prize-winning author Will Ferguson)