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A Good House

by Bonnie Burnard

Summary

This multigenerational novel, a bestseller in Canada, tells the story, beginning in 1949, of Bill Chambers. Home from the war and happily married, he finds his life shattered when his wife dies. But he remarries, equally happily, and his new wife helps him survive the unexpected death of a son and the other troubles that a large family can bring. The story continues into Bill's old age, and his increasing inability to hang on to reality in the face of dementia.

Customer Reviews

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Media Reviews

"It's as though Thornton Wilder's OUR TOWN has been turned into a quiet, unassuming novel....While Burnard is brilliant at capturing the day-to-day domesticity of the family, she could be faulted for ignoring the events of the larger world that dominate the years from 1949 to 1997. While history goes on around the Chambers family, Burnard makes only brief mention of it. But maybe that is the way it is with contented families as they work through their own simple lives....It's a plain, down-to-earth nice read."    -- Robert A. Papinchak

   -- Chicago Tribune Books

"In a lengthy, panoramic novel such as this, what goes in and what is left out is important. The occasional over-attention to detail is not, at the end, very serious, but the feeling that there are too many lives to be accounted for is a greater problem....It is hard not to be charmed by much of A GOOD HOUSE, possibly because it provides a real sense of comfort and of harmony. But, although it occasionally darts into the darker waters of intimacy and loss, it would be equally hard to see in it a truly remarkable portrait of family life."    -- Alex Clark

   -- Times Literary Supplement

"At times, Burnard's everything-including-the-kitchen-sink story telling style can seem almost aggressively old-fashioned....More often than not, though, Burnard's painstaking focus on seemingly mundane details makes the events that shape her characters' lives not only believable but also somehow bigger than the moment, universally true."    -- Louisa Kamps

   -- New York Times Book Review

"[An] incandescent first novel...."

   -- New Yorker

Bibliographic Details

Publisher: Picador USA
Published date: 2001
Size: 5.75 x 8.25 inches
Weight: 0.65 pounds
Pages: 309

Publisher's Notes

A Good House begins in 1949 in Stonebrook, Ontario, home to the Chambers family. The postwar boom and hope for the future color every facet of life: the possibilities seem limitless for Bill, his wife Sylvia, and their three children.

In the fifty years that follow, the possibilities narrow. 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.

Carol Shields, in The Ottawa Citizen, described A Good House as "the finest novel published in some years in our country."

Other Editions

• Hardcover - Henry Holt & Co (2000) - from $1.00
• Paperback - St Martins Pr (2001) - from $1.00

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