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It has come to my attention that I must make it clear at the beginning of my reviews that I received this book for free from the publisher. I have not been paid for doing this and all opinions are my own. I am Bookshop.org affiliated, which means I earn a very small amount of money if you buy from there using my direct link. Although I include purchase links to Amazon, I am not affiliated with them. I include them to make it easy for you to navigate to them if you so wish.
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The Blurb
The summer of 1979 should have been simple: two months on a dairy farm in rural Ontario to make up for a disastrous winter term. But for seventeen-year-old Evan Mulder—awkward, angsty, and armed only with a gift for running and numbers—nothing about the Logan farm proves simple.
Dumped in a dark laneway by his disappointed parents, Evan finds himself among strangers: the reserved Niall, warm-hearted Connie, their two young children, and one very judgmental farm dog. Between early morning milkings and mucking out stalls, Evan discovers that the Logans are caught between a rock and a hard place—mounting debt, a predatory neighbour circling their land, and farm records buried in desk drawers like secrets no one wants to face.
As Evan learns to navigate life beyond his suburban comfort zone, he also confronts the truth he’s been running from all year. In a summer of chickens and calculations, flower gardens and financial ledgers, he’ll find unexpected ways to belong—and discover that being small in a world of big egos might not be weakness, but wisdom.
A tender coming-of-age story set against the rhythms of rural life, Milksop is about the quiet courage it takes to show up, the healing power of honest work, and learning that sometimes the smallest acts of care matter most.
My Review
This was a moving coming of age story about a boy called, Evan, who is nicknamed Milksop.
Evan is seventeen and has not been doing well at school. He is anxious and worried, and his parents have no understanding of how he feels. He is constantly teased by his older brother, whom Evan feels is the perfect son in the eyes of his parents. In fact, it is his brother who gave him the derogatory nickname of Milksop, due to Evan's perceived lack of vigour and lack of assertion.
Evan takes comfort in running and mathematics. He likes the certainty of numbers in an erratic world. His parents decide to send him to a country farm for the summer to toughen him up a bit. His brother had been previously, and it quickly becomes apparent that his brother told of his nickname which, to Evan's horror, quickly gets adopted there too.
Evan is a city boy who has spent his life eating processed foods. When he finds himself on the farm, he is confronted with homemade and homegrown food. He is appalled and resists both the food and the work at every opportunity.
This is the story of a desperately unhappy young person who is on the cusp of adulthood. As the novel progresses, we understand the causes of his anxiety. He is a wonderful character, and I was rooting for him all the way. I enjoyed reading of the lessons he learned, his development, and how he ultimately finds a way to steer himself in such a complicated world.
This was a truly excellent novel which I enjoyed very much. The author understands her characters and the world in which she has placed them very well. She tells her story with skill, and I highly recommend this book.
Book Details
Publisher: Chicken House Press
Formats: e-book and paperback
No. of Pages: 386
Preorder Links
Chicken House Publishing
Amazon UK
Amazon CA
Amazon US
About the Author
John Van Rys is no longer young, he hasn’t been urban for about thirty years, and he’s never been hip. That makes him old, rural, and pretty square. That said, when he was 61, the Canada Council for the Arts designated him a New and Emerging Artist. Go figure!
John lives on a hobby farm outside Dunnville, Ontario, with his wife April, dogs, cats, horses, free-run egg-laying hens, and Cayuga ducks, as well as two of his adult children, their partners, his two granddaughters—and, just to keep things interesting, his mother-in-law. This life has supplied much of the inspiration for his fiction. People tell John that he has a thing about chickens, so he’s been given chicken mugs, chicken boots, chicken T-shirts, a stuffed chicken, and a chicken lunch bag. Chickens do appear all over the place in his fiction, but he’s convinced that doesn’t mean he has a weird obsession with them.
Until his retirement on July 1, 2025, his day job involved being a mild-mannered English professor, but his passion since late 2016 has been writing stories. He’s had short stories published in The New Quarterly, The Dalhousie Review, Agnes and True, Blank Spaces, and Solum Literary Journal. His story “Excavations” won the 2022 Prairie Fire MRB Short Fiction Contest. His first book-length collection, the story cycle Moonshine Promises, was published in 2021 by Wipf and Stock. He has drafted a second collection of stories, The Healing Arts, through the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and a mentorship at the Humber School for Writers Graduate Certificate. He completed his first novel, Milksop, through The Novelry.
You can find out more about John’s writing by visiting his website.
If you wish to stay up-to-date with his writing shenanigans, you can follow him at his Facebook page and at his Substack newsletter, Old Dog Dumps (ODD): Dispatches from a Journeyman Writer.
(ARC and media courtesy of the publisher)
(all opinions are my own)
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