A Good House

Book, 1969

Status

Available

Call number

813.54

Genres

General Fiction

All Topics

Fiction

Collection

Your library

Publication

Publisher Unknown (1969)

Description

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 generationsA 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.… (more)

Media reviews

Chatelaine

...You don't just read A Good House, you move into it for a while. And if it's a more forgiving place than your childhood home, so much the better. Burnard's characters can show what thriving families have always known.

— 3 more

Quill & Quire

Burnard's wise and assured first novel is an accomplishment to celebrate.

Time

...this gem of a first novel... is essential Burnard: appearances are lovingly, nostalgically recreated to be followed by a devastating insight that belies all we initially see... It is a legend of pain, pretense and hopeless love, the stuff that small towns, even big towns, are made of.

The Ottawa Citizen

...the finest novel published in some years in our country. Its grace, its generosity, its humanity are present on each of its pages.

User reviews

LibraryThing member Romonko

This book is set in Stonebrook, Ontario. It begins just after WWII, and the book ends in the year of 1997. The book is a family history of the Chambers family-their lives, loves, births, weddings, divorces and deaths. That's a lot to cover especially when the family is a large and gregarious one.

But Ms. Burnard does an admirable job of this. This book was the 1999 winner of the prestigious Giller Prize and I think it was a well-deserved honour. Her writing style is deceptively simple, but the character development of this large cast of characters is remarkable. The book covers all sorts of family events and catastrophies, but does it in such an understated style. It is not often that an author can achieve such a complete job of character development within one book. It usually takes a series to achieve this. But Ms. Burnard accomplishes this difficult task with aplomb. These characters live and breathe. The book paints a very rich and complex picture of human nature and human foibles indeed.

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LibraryThing member heidiho

Heart-warming. Covers three generations of a small-town Ontario family from end of WWII to turn of the century.

LibraryThing member pdebolt

This Canadian author writes with the same grace and precision as fellow Canadians Carol Shields and Margaret Atwood. Spanning fifty years, it is a mult-generational story, which encompasses all the difficulties and joys that bind families. It is, in my opinion, worthy of the Giller prize it

received.

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LibraryThing member groovygal506

I didn't love this book. May have just been the timing and my inability to give it my full and extended attention. It was not a page turner at all but nonetheless it was a beautiful story of a families ups and downs.

LibraryThing member tripleblessings

This novel won the Giller Prize for Canadian fiction. A rich portrait of an ordinary family through several generations from the 1950s to the 1990s. The family is portrayed every 7 years, with sometimes surprising changes from one period to the next. Significant problems occur, family members each

have their own struggles, disfunctions and victories, and in the end their relationships endure and their love deepens. Chatelaine magazine said "You don't just read A Good House, you move into it for a while." Highly recommended.

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LibraryThing member Cecilturtle

A family tale of a household evolving after Mom's death - simple but gripping

LibraryThing member debnance

The characters and the plot twist and turn in ways you don't anticipate and don't want them to go. Nevertheless, the characters and the plot seem to have to go the way they go. Recommended.

LibraryThing member cathst

One of my favourite books of all time.

LibraryThing member Nickelini

A Good House tells the story of the Chambers family from 1949 through 1997, and follows the waves of their births, deaths, marriages, and divorces. It is set in a fictional small town northwest of London, Ontario toward Lake Huron, but could really be set in any small town in North America. Just

substitute "going off to university," with "going off to college," and "Muskoka chair" with "Adirondack chair," and the book could be set in the US.

What I enjoyed most about this novel was Burnard's unique writing style where she packs a wealth of information in each sentence, and then packs her paragraphs with these full sentences. In doing this, she creates nuanced, rounded characters and tells a story without a lot of action. What she achieves on the page reminds me of the folk art landscape painting where every element is given equal weight and importance. And like folk art painting, Burnard's book is interesting and worthwhile, but it's not fabulously sophisticated high art either. However, it was good enough to win the 1999 Giller Prize, and that says something.

Recommended for: I think this would appeal to the reader who enjoys books by Carol Shields and that sort. I loved Burnard's packed sentences, but others might find them tedious. It is an impressive first novel.

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LibraryThing member LDVoorberg

A wonderful book a bout regular people who have a pretty normal life. one family and their relationships and choices, all realistic and non-dramatic. After reading two books that were a little bit more "out there' it was really nice to read something that was an everyday experience kind of book. it

sounds boring, but it is simply "safe".

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LibraryThing member oldblack

I hadn't read any of Bonnie Burnard's work before this. I think this was probably a Library Thing recommendation based on my high ratings of books by Canadian authors such as Carol Shields, Elizabeth Hay, Miriam Toews, Alice Munro, Joan Barfoot, and nearly-Canadian Beth Powning. Burnard is,

however, not in the same class as this group, in my opinion. I did like her slow, understated style, but I felt I didn't get to know her characters as much as I would have liked. The essential underlying story was well told and worth telling. Of course, being in a 'second tier' of Canadian women authors still puts her way above a lot of her peers!

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