The Full Catastrophe, Meira Cook
The Full Catastrophe, Meira Cook
11 Rating(s)
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.49

The Full Catastrophe
A Novel

Author: Méira Cook

Narrator: Josh Bloomberg

Unabridged: 10 hr 10 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/16/2022


Synopsis

The Full Catastrophe is the story of Charlie Minkoff, a thirteen-year-old boy born with intersex traits, and his grandfather, Oscar, a ninety-year-old Holocaust survivor and Charlie’s best friend and confidante. Because the Nazis disrupted Oscar’s opportunity for a bar mitzvah, Charlie decides to right the historical wrong and arrange for a joint bar mitzvah for himself and his zeide.
Living with his artist mother in a derelict loft in downtown Winnipeg, perpetually wondering about the Orthodox Jewish father who abandoned him, and tormented in school because of his biological differences, Charlie navigates assorted catastrophes thanks to his grandfather’s love and the makeshift family who surround him: his mother’s best friend Weeza, a couple of elderly shut-in neighbours, a mysterious girl in his class who has dark secrets of her own, and his desperately needy and perpetually flatulent dog, Gellman.
The Full Catastrophe is a novel of psychological complexity, tenderness, humour, and community. It is about becoming men; a novel of secrets and the journeys these secrets propel.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Kaiden on August 11, 2022

I mean, I get it that part of the story is not wanting to be at the centre of your own story, but I did want the main character to be at the centre so I really didn't enjoy this book. Especially since I chose this book since stories centered around intersex people are few and far between. Charlie is......more

Goodreads review by Mike on August 03, 2022

"Such is life," Ms. Kambaja observed as she did every year. "Comedy and tragedy, romance and loss, politics and farce. The full catastrophe." Ms. Kambaja is the Ancestry Studies teacher to Charlie Minkoff, a 13-year-old in September 2019 with intersex traits. Charlie has XX chromosomes, but looks mor......more

Goodreads review by Mark on July 09, 2022

Cook's best novel yet. Warm and funny, with a very readable story. It's entertaining as a YA novel or as adult fiction. The story of Charlie Minkoff, a thirteen-year-old intersex boy, Jewish and living in Winnipeg. The story involves him trying to convince his aged grandfather, Oscar, to have a bar......more

Goodreads review by Janet on October 06, 2022

A very interesting and readable novel! The main character is a teenaged boy with intersex traits, but it would be inaccurate to say that's what the book is about, any more than you could say that's what the person is about. It's just one aspect of his complicated life. The other characters were also......more

Goodreads review by Rachel on September 22, 2022

A boy or a girl? When Charlie Minkoff is born in 2006 with intersex traits, the doctor wants to immediately perform surgery in order to fix what he sees as a problem. Fortunately for Charlie, his grandfather, Oscar Wolf Minkoff thinks Charlie is perfect as he is and refuses to let the doctor touch h......more