Bonnie Burnard’s much celebrated A Good House has become a modern classic with its rendering of three generations of ordinary family life. Bill Chambers has come home from the Second World War with several fingers missing, but with his hope intact. He wants the best for his wife, Sylvia, and his children, Patrick, Paul and Daphne, and with his steady job at the hardware store in his small hometown, the future opens broadly before him. But as the family spreads from its small town into the larger world, the bonds deepen and widen, and sometimes fray.
Burnard brings her own original voice to the story, unfolding a wonderfully complex web of family emotions and loyalties. Her keen powers of observation, her mastery of detail, her wit and her sensitivity to emotional nuance create a moving and profound portrait of family life. A magnetic story of an ordinary small-town family, A Good House is an extraordinary novel.