Jennie's Boy by Wayne Johnston
A memoir about a Newfoundland childhood
For six months between 1966 and 1967, Wayne Johnston and his family lived in a wreck of a house across from his grandparents in Goulds, Newfoundland. At seven, Wayne was sickly and skinny, unable to keep food down, plagued with insomnia and a relentless cough that no doctor could diagnose, though they had already removed his tonsils, adenoids and appendix. To the neighbours, he was known as "Jennie's boy," a backhanded salute to his tiny, ferocious mother, who felt judged for Wayne's condition at the same time as worried he might never grow up.
Unable to go to school, Wayne spent his days with his witty, religious, deeply eccentric maternal grandmother, Lucy. During these six months of Wayne's childhood, he and Lucy faced two life-or-death crises, and only one of them lived to tell the tale.
Jennie's Boy is Wayne's tribute to a family and a community that were simultaneously fiercely protective of him and fed up with having to make allowances for him. His boyhood was full of pain, yes, but also tenderness and Newfoundland wit. By that wit, and through love — often expressed in the most unloving ways — Wayne survived. (From Knopf Canada)
Jennie's Boy won the 2023 Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal. It will be championed by Linwood Barclay on Canada Reads 2025. The great Canadian book debate will take place on March 17-20. This year, we are looking for one book to change the narrative.
- Thriller writer Linwood Barclay champions Jennie's Boy by Wayne Johnston
- Meet the Canada Reads 2025 contenders
- The Canada Reads 2025 longlist is here!
- Jennie's Boy is a funny and candid memoir about childhood in Newfoundland — read an excerpt now
- Wayne Johnston on how one wrong thing can ruin your whole life
- Wayne Johnston reflects on the wisdom, wit and tough love of his mother and grandmother in Jennie's Boy
- The CBC Books fall reading list: 30 Canadian books to read now
Wayne Johnston is a writer, born and raised in Goulds, N.L. His novels include The Divine Ryans, A World Elsewhere, The Custodian of Paradise, The Navigator of New York and The Colony of Unrequited Dreams. His 1999 memoir, Baltimore's Mansion, won the RBC Taylor Prize. The Colony of Unrequited Dreams was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and was a 2003 Canada Reads finalist, when it was championed by now prime minister Justin Trudeau.
Why Wayne Johnston wrote Jennie's Boy
"I looked at all the years that I could remember and tried to pick out which one was most representative of what life was like, not just for me, but for my family of three brothers and my mom and dad — my mom, most people call Jennie," Johnston told Shelagh Rogers on The Next Chapter.
It was kind of the funniest year in a lot of ways, a bit sad in some other ways.- Wayne Johnston
"It was kind of the funniest year in a lot of ways, a bit sad in some other ways. And even though the book is called Jennie's Boy, I kind of struggled with the notion of calling it Lucy's Boy. That was my grandmother. I was her pet. And that's why I talked about it."
Interviews with Wayne Johnston
