The good son: A novel

by Craig Nova

Book Overview

It has characters of great outward bravery and of heartbreaking inner need--indeed the characters are as vivid with suffering and with spirit as recurring dreams.--John Irving, The New York Times Book... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0440029163
• ISBN13: 9780440029168
• Release Date: January 1982
• Publisher: Delacorte Press/S. Lawrence
• Length: 436 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Great find for any Nova novice

Just checking Kindle selections and this must certainly be one of the best electronic choices out there currently. A superb piece of writing that I have been through several times. Family interactions that are acutely real. Scenes that will make you feel you have experienced them visually. Try all the other non-electric Nova's out there as well.

Wow!

I am in awe. Mr. Nova has written a magnificant book. The story is coursing with testosterone, adult peer pressure and the constant demands to abide by those spoken and unspoken social expectations. Though these events take place during the time around World War Two, the basic aspects of human nature are still applicable today. The three female characters' first-person accounts help to give a counterweight to the primarily male-driven tale. The first person narrative of each character gives divergent perspectives of the person's desires, frustrations and motivations, but never slows down the development of the story. The mother's intermittent remarks about different animals which inhabit their estate is a nice touch. The metaphor of the goat is pure genius. This story will resonate with me for years to come. Well done, Mr. Nova.

Nova at his best

Do not confuse - as some other reviewers have - Craig Nova's stunning novel, The Good Son, with the not-so-stunning movie of the same title starring Macauly Culkin. The two are completely unrelated, although Nova's novel would certainly make an excellent film. At a basic level, The Good Son tells the story of Pop Mackinnon, a wealthy country lawyer, and his son, Chip. On another level, The Good Son is the closest and most capable literary understanding of the human condition that I have read in recent memory. Pop Mackinnon is a man with grand and masculine ambitions for himself and his sons. After his eldest son John is killed in World War II, Chip is the only son Pop has left. Having returned from the war as POW, Chip is expected to follow in Pop's footsteps - to become a lawyer and to marry well. When Chip's relationship with Jean, a 'lower class' woman, gets in the way of his engagement to the pure-bred Carolyn, the battle between father and son escalates to an emotionally and physically dangerous height where the bond of love between a father and son becomes that which each can use to hurt the other the most. Nova tells the story through the eyes of several different narrators, all characters in the story, whose subsequent roles as character and narrator add depth and clarity to the novel. To punctuate the events of the story, Nova takes several short excursions into the natural world, through the diary entries of Mrs. Mackinnon - Pop's wife, Chip's mother, and a soft-spoken overseer of the battle lines drawn between father and son. In these short passages, Nova demonstrates a profound understanding of the ebb and flow of life, the intermingling of the forces that create, unite and destroy us all. Craig Nova exterts a masterful control over his work: as you read it, you come to realize the volume and intensity of thought that is required to produce prose so deliberately spare, that each word, each sentence, resounds with delicate roar. The Good Son, like Nova's other works, is virtuoustic stuff. Not everyone will enjoy it or understand it, but I suspect that those who read it will be as richly rewarded as I have been. I highly recommend this novel, Nova's fourth and perhaps his best. I'm in good company recommending it, too: John Irving (of The Cider House Rules and The World According to Garp) wrote an excellent review of The Good Son in the New York Times Book Review in 1982 that you ought to read

Scariest book I EVER read

and I read it in the fourth grade. It still gives me chills.I think this is the book I read, anyways.It's about this boy who's mother dies, and his father has to make business trips, so the boy goes to live with his aunt, uncle, and cousins. His cousin, Henry, is about the same age as he is, and Henry is evil.If you can find a copy of this book, you really should try it, but it truly is frightening.