The Good Parents

by Joan London

Book Overview

A two-time winner of Australia's prestigious The Age Book of the Year Award, Joan London's debut novel, Gilgamesh , was published to rapturous acclaim both in her native Australia and in the United States. Now, London has delivered The Good Parents , a tender and compelling tale of mother love and the harrowing moment when a daughter spreads her wings and vanishes from her parents' orbit. Maya de Jong is an eighteen-year-old country girl who moves...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802170579
• ISBN13: 9780802170576
• Release Date: February 2009
• Publisher: Grove Press, Black Cat
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.4" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Superb!

This is a superb novel. London is a masterful writer at the top of her game. The writing is lyric, sly, and fluid. Her many characters are all fully alive, deep, and drawn with a deep sense of history, so the book has multiple emotional centers. London made me realize all over again how much each of us are a product of our genes AND our times. How lives take shape in early adulthood, how affinities and patterns are passed from one generation to the next, how individuals struggle to love, to grow up, and add some share of goodness to the world are the novel's profound concerns. London is something of an animist, for everything in this book buzzes with life : the people, their homes, stands of bamboo, pine trees, the family dog. London's canvas is huge, and she navigates it with humor, high confidence and compassion. I read this book breathlessly, trying to slow down, dole it out, keep within its thrall for as long as I could, but it carried me along, in its own swift, beautiful currents.

Good Good Parents

Reminiscent of the style of Kate Atkinson, Joan London creates characters of surprising depths in this family saga. Although the setup may not be entirely plausible, it serves as a springboard to illustrate the similarities experienced by a mother and daughter at their coming of age. The inner lives of many of the characters are presented, making this an exploration into more than one storyline. What makes women go off with the wrong kind of man, and what kind of effect does it have on those around them. An equally compelling story could be built around the situation of a neighbor's absconding from rural Australia to Florida to pursue an Internet romance, but that trail was left on the periphery, leaving the central family to deal with their issues. The writing is gorgeous, with lovely metaphors such as "Lovely pale skinned girls with sensitive expressions went past, like Parisiennes on their way to a cello lesson."

The Mistakes of Youth

Eighteen-year-old Maya de Jong moves from a small town in Western Australia to the big city, Melbourne. Soon she is in an inappropriate relationship with her boss. And when her parents come to visit her some months later, she has already left town with him. The rest of the book focuses on the parents' attempts to find her and to come to terms with the implications of her disappearance. Most of the book is told in flashbacks. As their despair pulls them further and further apart, the two parents, Toni and Jacob, each find themselves looking back at their own younger days. They too have had to stumble back from roads that lead nowhere, finding each other in the fringes of the hippie movement, and rebuilding lives of approximate normality. Maya's actions, it seems, are part of a pattern -- but patterns can also be broken. The parents' search for their missing daughter becomes part of a larger quest to understand themselves and their need for one another and those around them. This is a cleverly constructed book. Almost all the encounters in it, whether in the past or the present, seem designed as a gloss on the whole: different family relationships, whether warm or distant; different views of friendship, sex, and love; and different ways in which men can connect to women, from controlling them to calling on their pity. Though a diffuse book in many respects, this is essentially a novel about connections. Not a perfect novel; sometimes the connections seem a little too pat, and often the diffuseness undermines its momentum. But Joan London nonetheless has an authentic voice, writing in an Australian setting, but with universal appeal.

i loved this book

Very enjoyable book about a family in Australia who have had more than their share of twists and turns in their lives. After her married lover/boss's wife dies, Maya mysteriously disapears. her parents Jacob and Toni have come for a visit and discover her gone. The story goes back and forth in time, spinning an intricate story of sadness, love and betrayal. I finished this book very quickly because I couldn't wait to see how it would end. Like the previous reviewer, I plan on buying Joan London's other book. Excellent author!

The Good Parents

A big booming story of Australia and the people who inhabit it. London's narrative is brilliant, showing a typical family saga and the inner depths of her characters lives. I was so impressed with her writing that I went out and brought her first book Gilgamesh.