Profound, perceptive, and wryly observed, Estates Large and Small is the story of one man's reckoning and an ardent defense of the shape books make in a life.
What decades of rent increases and declining readership couldn't do, a pandemic finally did: Phil Cooper has reluctantly closed his secondhand bookstore and moved his business online. Smoking too much pot and listening to too much Grateful Dead, he suspects that he's overdue when it comes to understanding the bigger picture of who he is and what we're all doing here. So he's made another decision: to teach himself 2,500 years of Western philosophy.
Thankfully, he meets Caroline, a fellow book lover who agrees to join him on his trek through the best of what's been thought and said. But Caroline is on her own path, one that compels Phil to rethink what it means to be alive in the twenty-first century. In Estates Large and Small Ray Robertson renders one man's reckoning with both wry humour and tender joy, reminding us of what it means to live, love, and, when the time comes, say goodbye.
"Robertson is a moral writer and a bitingly intelligent one, a man who writes with penetrating insight of what needs to be written about: beauty, truth and goodness."
--Globe and Mail
"Heartfelt, funny, rigorous, practical without ever being preachy . . . a book that feels like a friend."
--Montreal Gazette
Ray Robertson is the author of nine novels, four collections of non-fiction, and a book of poetry. His work has been translated into several languages. Born and raised in Chatham, Ontario, he lives in Toronto.
The book will be available at Mac's Backs or through our website at the 20% book club discount.
Meeting location details TBA.