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The Good Father

Noah Hawley

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Jan 22, 2012 Laura rated it it was ok

Shelves: mt-bookpile-2011-2015, old-reads

The blurbage suggested that this was going to be like We Need to Talk About Kevin or Nineteen Minutes: how does a family cope when a child has done the unthinkable? And to some extent the plot does live up to that premise. Dr. Paul Allen's life is turned upside down when his son Daniel kills Senator Seagram, the leading Democratic presidential candidate. Of course Paul wants to believe that there's no way that Daniel could have done this - there must be a conspiracy, or his son was brainwashed, ...more

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Aug 17, 2013 Cindy rated it really liked it

When JFK was killed, Americans mourned alongside Jackie O. When RFK, MLK, Lennon, and the list goes on, America mourned these bigger than life celebrities. When McVeigh bombed the Oklahoma federal building, Americans cried for those parents, lost without their children. And, in the last two decades, we've mourned students from Columbine, Virginia Tech, and Sandy Hook, innocents from New York, DC, and Boston. It seems we are constantly faced with a tragedy that breaks our hearts and binds us toge When JFK was killed, Americans mourned alongside Jackie O. When RFK, MLK, Lennon, and the list goes on, America mourned these bigger than life celebrities. When McVeigh bombed the Oklahoma federal building, Americans cried for those parents, lost without their children. And, in the last two decades, we've mourned students from Columbine, Virginia Tech, and Sandy Hook, innocents from New York, DC, and Boston. It seems we are constantly faced with a tragedy that breaks our hearts and binds us together in our grief. And then we move on...because that's life...and routine and necessities pull us back into the minutiae of our lives...thankfully because how else would we cope and live!?! But it's easier to do that when you are removed from the tragedy, when you are "watching" it happen. Dr. Allen, the primary voice of the novel, can't do this. He can pretend. He can try. But he can't escape the burden of fathering a murderer. The novel is peppered with question after question as Dr. Allen tries to figure out what made his son do this, what turned him into a "monster." Did he miss something? Did his ex-wife do something wrong? Did the divorce ruin his son? Should he, as a father, have made different choices? In his grief, he tries to evaluate his choices. Liking where his life is, career and family wise, should he have sacrificed his present for his past? Why did Daniel go wrong when so many others, products of divorce, do not? These are the questions we always ask. What were the parents doing? What did they miss? How could we have prevented the tragedy? WHY!?! That's always there. We always want to know but, knowing the cause, never satisfies, never explains it. In this book, you'll learn why Daniel does what he does. It's all there in his voice, via flashbacks or journal entries, and, as mentioned in the novel, it won't really give you solace or understanding. How can you relate to or understand the logic of someone disturbed? How can you blame the parents or society when, in this instance, Daniel is capable of making his own decision, of understanding right from wrong? Alongside Allen's grief and struggle to accept the truth, we see how his family is treated, how life is like for those left behind. We also get periodic connections to those aforementioned assassins in US history. They are woven into the narrative, helping you and Allen connect to his son and to the questions he's asking. It's really an interesting read and in the same vein as Nineteen Minutes, A Thousand Cuts, and We Need to Talk to Kevin. Disturbing and insightful. ...more

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