Estates Large and Small

Winner of Georgian Bay Reads 2025
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.

About the author

Ray Robertson is the author of nine novels, five collections of non-fiction, and a book of poetry. His work has been translated into several languages. He contributed the liner notes to two Grateful Dead archival releases: Dave’s Picks #45 and the Here Comes Sunshine 1973 box set. Born and raised in Chatham, Ontario, he lives in Toronto.

Summary

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.

Foreword

• Print run: 5,000 copies


• Co-op available


• Advance reader copies


• Edelweiss digital review copies


• National TV & radio campaign


• National print media campaign


• Online and social media campaign


• E-book available at same time as print edition


• Virtual launch and festival appearances


• Excerpts in Lit Hub, Electric Lit
  

Additional text

Praise for Ray Robertson

“While How to Die is a slim book, it offers some hefty insights, leavened with frequent, self-effacing humour. There are numerous passages here which, while quick to read (the book is very accessible, despite its philosophical bona fides), nonetheless take hours to fully internalize … Brilliant.” —Toronto Star

“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

"Sharp-tongued … as Robertson ponders family and home as well as ‘what it means to love someone and to lose someone and to have to go on living anyway,’ he presents an intriguing character whose very real troubles are offset by bright flashes of hope."—Publishers Weekly

“One of the country’s finest literary voices."—National Post

“Many of us sense that the world has too many moving parts and can become utterly defeated. Ray Robertson has found a road back in this splendid and intriguing book [Why Not: Fifteen Reasons to Live].”—Jim Harrison

Product details

• Authors: Ray Robertson
• Publisher: Ingram Publishers Services
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Release: 10.05.2022, delayed
• EAN: 9781771964623
• ISBN: 978-1-77196-462-3
• No. of pages: 320
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; FICTION / City Life, FICTION / Psychological