A Good House: A Novel, by Bonnie Burnard
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A Good House: A Novel, by Bonnie Burnard
Ebook PDF A Good House: A Novel, by Bonnie Burnard
A runaway #1 bestseller in Canada, this richly layered first novel tells the story of the intricacies and rituals that shape a family's life over three generations
A Good House begins in 1949 in Stonebrook, Ontario, home to the Chambers family. The postwar boom and hope for the future colors every facet of life: possibilities seem limitless for Bill, his wife, Sylvia, and their three children.
In the fifty years that follow, the possibilities narrow into lives, etched by character, fate, and circumstance. Sylvia's untimely death marks her family indelibly but in ways only time will reveal. Paul's perfect marriage yields an imperfect child. Daphne unabashedly follows an unconventional path, while Patrick discovers that his happiness requires a series of compromises. Bill confronts the onset of old age less gracefully than anticipated, and throughout, his second wife, Margaret, remains, surprisingly, the family anchor.With her remarkable ability to probe the hidden, often disturbing landscapes of love and to illuminate the complexities of human experience, Bonnie Burnard brings to her deceptively simple narrative a clarity that is both moving and profound.
A Good House: A Novel, by Bonnie Burnard- Amazon Sales Rank: #493375 in eBooks
- Published on: 2015-03-03
- Released on: 2015-03-03
- Format: Kindle eBook
Amazon.com Review It's not an easy thing to write a novel about a family. Of necessity--and as the narrative years advance--characters proliferate, success and tragedy accrue, events maneuver to the fore with faintly arbitrary impetus. First-time novelist Bonnie Burnard, however, evades such worn grooves with the purest renunciation: a patient and lovely voice. In A Good House, awarded Canada's Giller Prize in 1999, Burnard documents an Ontario family over half a century with unadorned, deliberate, and tender sympathy.
Flush with post-World War II optimism, veteran Bill Chambers and his wife Sylvia settle in to the business of raising their three young children. Bill logs full days at the local hardware store; Sylvia strings the family's clothes out to dry in the backyard and proffers dinner punctually. Her wasting health, however, leaves her husband yearning for a contentment now stolen and her children disquieted by the sudden tenuousness of their security. When Sylvia dies and Bill remarries, his staunch and pragmatic bride Margaret displays a three-fold capacity: she allows him his sluggish and methodical affection; she preserves Sylvia's memory with untainted regard; and she cultivates a deft empathy with her stepchildren.
Burnard's meticulous pacing nearly, but never quite, upstages the story itself, although her unwieldy and expanding cast of characters occasionally threatens such harm. Margaret is the real wonder of the book. While the requisite affairs, divorces, and funerals intervene--and as Bill declines excruciatingly into a belligerent stranger--she summons a reserve of affection, the source of which is admirably opaque. She perseveres in "hoping as mothers and fathers almost always do that the difficulties could be examined, could be broken apart and fixed one by one by one." Burnard's tale is dignified and generous. --Ben Guterson
From Publishers Weekly In 1952, 12-year-old Daphne Chambers falls from a trapeze and is left with a permanently asymmetrical face. In 1955, Daphne's mother, Sylvia, dies of cancer at age 40. From these two life-altering events, Canadian short story writer Burnard spins her engrossing debut novel, a traditional generational saga that unfolds with quiet grace and measure. Told from a variety of points of view, the book traces the upheavals and affirmations of the very ordinary Chambers family of Stonebrook, Ontario, from 1949 to 1997. The year after Sylvia's death, her husband, Bill, an injured WWII vet, remarries. His new wife, the unflappable Margaret, who used to work with him at the town hardware store, helps him raise his three children. Paul, the baby, becomes a hockey star and eventually a farmer, marrying young; oldest brother Patrick, a lawyer, is destined to be the keeper of family secrets; and middle child Daphne makes an eccentric choice for that time and place: she'll become the single mother of two daughters. As the years pass, the family, in nuclear and then extended form, gathers around the kitchen table to celebrate and to mourn. There are no saints, no Jobs, no Hamlets in Burnard's tale, just flawed people making the best possible choices given the passions and options of the moment, choices that sometimes require disingenuousness, stonewalling and outright lies. Changes in the initially remote town of Stonebrook are a significant strand in the narrative weave. Flashes of sly humor and an ability to avoid sentimentality are some of Burnard's skills, and the narrative's calm flow (once one gets past an initial excess of detail) builds to a deeply moving story of the truths of family life. 50,000 first printing; major ad/promo; author tour. (Sept.) FYI: A bestseller in Canada, this novel won the 1999 Giller Prize. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal This 1999 Giller Prize winner and Canadian best seller takes as its canvas 48 years in the lives of an Ontario family, beginning with hardware-store owner Bill Chambers and his wife, Sylvia, who soon dies. The book seeks not to dazzle but simply to present the highs and lows, the experiences ordinary and extraordinary, of a "normal" family. Yet the characters are so fully realized that one feels one has lived with them and knows them, as usually happens in Trollope's novels or in those of another Canadian, Carol Shields (although Burnard takes in several lives, while Shields generally focuses on one). Even the understated titleDit isn't really a book about a houseDhas something to say about its solidity and graceful prose. One can even forgive Burnard occasional gaffe, like having one of her characters own a Mustang in 1963. This could easily become an Oprah book. Highly recommended.-DRobert E. Brown, Onondaga Cty. P.L., Syracuse, NY Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most helpful customer reviews
17 of 17 people found the following review helpful. Deceivingly Simple By Cathleen This novel tells the story of one family, 3 generations, over a span of 50 years. Burnard allows us to share in their happiness, anger and grief, as well as all those other parts day-to-day existence.The simple writing can seem one-dimensional at first glance, but take a slightly closer look and all the layers of the characters, their lives, and the story open up before you in this beautiful tapestry that we call "life."I can honestly say that this book had a strong impact on me, to the point where I think it might actually be a life-changer for me. "A Good House" is the newest addition to my list of all-time favourite books.
31 of 35 people found the following review helpful. great story By A Customer In 1949 Stonebrook, Ontario, Bill and Sylvia Chambers and their three children feel optimistic about the future after the gloom of the recent war. However, the boom economy fails to keep reality out as a few years later, Sylvia dies. Not too long after that, Bill marries Margaret Kemp.Over the subsequent years, happiness and tragedy strike the now extended Chambers family. Through the best and worst of times, Margaret surprisingly becomes the glue that keeps the family together even as new families have been formed and the younger generation moves on to new lives.A GOOD HOUSE is a very good character study of a Canadian family during the latter half of the twentieth century. The story line is low keyed, but very insightful into the desires, motives, and even the "protective" lies that provide the audience with a full look (so deep readers will feel voyeuristic) into the heart and soul of the lead cast. Though by the latter years the extended family becomes difficult to keep track of, that approach adds depth to the prime players by showing the new tugs on their time and emotion, which in turn drags them away from one another. Bonnie Burnard writes an intriguing tale that shows when discerning "voyeurism" can be entertaining, realistic, and perceptive.Harriet Klausner
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful. Looking for your reading group's next book? By A Customer This is a beautiful book. It lulls you and pulls you into the world of a Canadian family from the war years on -- a group of ordinary, decent people who brave life's usual difficulties: kids' accidents, the deaths of loved ones, troubled children, good people undone by old age. You can tell that this author loves people: the stuff of ordinary life, she seems to say, is worth our attention. As an American reader, I enjoyed this book because the characters also seem a little exotic in their own way (if you can think of Canadians as exotic). These are fairly stoic people, a little repressed, moral, genuinely preoccupied with the importance of acting decently. This is not a book that relies on fabricated drama or cute characters to grab your attention. Instead what you get is the wisdom of an author who really knows people, and who is able to capture the small and great events in their lives with beautiful, precise language. This is also a novel that acquires momentum and becomes more profound with every page. The portrait of Mr. Chambers in his old age is powerful, moving and brilliant.
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