A Good House

by Bonnie Burnard

In Canadian short-story writer Bonnie Burnard's deeply moving novel, we meet the Chambers family: Bill and Sylvia and their three children, an ordinary family from Ontario. Beginning in 1949, we follow the Chambers for the next fifty years through the many joys and disappointments of their lives: a childhood accident, a tragic illness ending in death, and a remarriage for Bill. Some of the children choose a traditional route, marrying and having children of their own. One forges her own very new path. The clan expands and changes; marriages fail and careers bloom. But despite the heart-aches and difficulties each member of the family faces, there is never a lack of love to be found. With writing so clear and crisp it rings with honesty and grace, Burnard's characters work their way under your skin and into your heart-an auspicious debut.

Genres: Fiction, Canada, Book Club, Contemporary, Canadian Literature, Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Bonnie Burnard was a Canadian novelist and short story writer.

She grew up in Forest, Ontario and lived much of her life in Saskatchewan. Burnard based her books on her roots in Southwestern Ontario.

In 1989 Women of Influence won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for a first novel. In 1995 she was awarded the Marian Engel Award, and in 1999, she won the Giller Prize for her novel, A Good House.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Dawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like the meandering style of this family story.

I was rather partial to the story gaps, where chapters would start 2-9 years later and you are left to catch up on what had happened and what was happening. I found it an enticing way to read a story.

The almost never judgmental love that is portrayed in the story is a nice change from the often dysfunctional families in so many books.

I also like how, for the most part, the entire story focuses on the people in the family. Not on the changing world around them or even how those changes are effecting them. It's just about family dynamics through 50 years of love, tragedy, marriage, divorce, death and children.

[Will Ansbacher · Rating 1 out of 5]

not sure if I will finish this; so far it has not engaged me ... someone else called it "a laundry list"

... well that came true. It's not a very long book but I had a sinking feeling on page 1 as the little stream burbled out of a cleft in the hills, made its way through the town whose name I forget, performed a right turn at the backs of some houses with a story to tell and proceeded in a north-westerly direction past the parade ground where ... I'm making the details up, but this was the tone. Way too much whimsy and inconsequential detail.

It's the story of an extended family in a small Canadian town from the post-war years to round about now. It could have been interesting, but as the host of characters who might or might not have had some bearing on later developments grew, I felt more and more detached.

It was like listening to the relative with verbal diarrhoea who has an great piece of history to tell but fancies themselves as a raconteur - can't help filling in every detail and following every thread so you have tuned out long before the end.
For me that was chapter 1, somewhere in the '50s. Yawn.

[Bibliovoracious · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely to read a multi-generational family story without dysfunction and incest. B.B. performs a literary magic trick- making a happy story interesting.

[Lori · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a book. As close to perfect as any I’ve read. A 1999 Giller Prize winner who’s author sadly passed away earlier this year. This is a sweeping epic of a story spanning multiple years: 1949-1997. Telling the story of the Chambers family, a mostly typical Canadian family from small town Ontario. A family that suffered its share of tragedies starting with daughter Daphne’s horrific fall from a makeshift trapeze at age 12. What makes this book brilliant is the style employed by Ms. Burnard: distant third person, jumping between multiple Points of Views and multiple years (5-7) where much of what happened in between is slowly revealed through whichever character’s point of view it is. A delicate unveiling of all that is wonderful and terrible in the lives of these people. How the author manages to build such a strong attachment and familiarity with all these characters despite the number of them and the removed narration is sheer genius. These characters are real and fallible and, by the end of the book, as eerily familiar to you as if they were your own family. They stick with you long after the close of the book as does the absolutely perfect ending: a close with Margaret examining a family picture on the steps of the town hall. 37 of them squished in the limited space. All because Bill, the family patriarch insisted this picture be taken before the hall is torn down. Margaret reflects that someone should write the names of who’s who in the picture before they’re forgotten, a “legend” she calls it to mark that moment, this family; all their heartaches and joys. Brilliant to the very last word. Highly recommended.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was given to me as a gift (one found at a yard sale for $1), and I encountered it knowing nothing about the author or the story.

I loved it. It's the story of a family over 50 years, which seems kind of ho-hum, been-there-read-that, right?

Burnard makes it into something more. She makes daily life and the big events (illness, early death, loss of love) equally riveting. I slowed down as I came to the last few chapters of this novel, not wanting to hurry it.

There's nothing epic in this family's story, but Burnard makes their time on earth seem both hard to bear and worth it.

Why not a 5-star? I'm measuring it against other books it, for some reason, reminds me of, for example, Stone Diaries by Carol Shields and Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson, which are 5s. This? Almost.

[Candice · Rating 3 out of 5]

I almost gave up on this a couple of times. It is a family story told over a period of 50 years, but the author goes into way too much detail. It begins in 1949, then jumps to 1953, then 1955 and on up to 1997. Sometimes these gaps make the story a bit difficult to follow. A child is born in 1963, and is mentioned in 1970, but you don't really know much about her until she is an adult in 1986. With the birth of children and grandchildren, there were so many characters I had trouble keeping track of all of them and the various spouses. However, the story did pick up during the second half of the book, and I did read it to the end.

[Bonnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read it twice to remember why it was I liked it the first time. Now I'll have to pull it off the shelf again one day.

I can say that I liked it far more than her book of short stories.

[Colleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book started out wonderfully, telling the tale of one particular family. The only problem was that by the end of the book, there were too many characters! The kids all married, had kids of their own who in turn grew up, and I found that there were just too many characters floating around. She was only able to touch briefly on each of them by that point; by the end, there was no meat in the story. Still, worth reading.

[Gail Amendt · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoy a good family saga, and I think that is what this book is intended to be, but it didn't quite work for me. This family is too ordinary, and the things that happen are too mundane. Children are born, people die, marriages begin and end, but there just isn't much to bring tension into this novel. The family is as boring and ordinary as my own, and there is no background of war, dysfunction, scandal, migration, hardship, or any of the usual things that make family stories interesting, that make a reader feel invested. And it covers too long a time period and too many generations in one book. It started out well enough. The beginning is set in the 1950's and 1960's in a small town in Ontario, and is quite a charming look at the simplicity of life at that time. The characters are quite well developed at the beginning, but as the book moves on, large leaps in time are made, and more and more people are added as the characters marry and have children and grandchildren. By the end I felt I didn't know anyone any more and really didn't care what happened to them. This was disappointing, as some of my favorite books are family sagas, but this genre is better done as a series, with each book covering a shorter time period with more substance.

[Robin Marie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read more than half of this book before I finally admitted that I couldn't care less what happened, and there are too many books in the work to waste my time feeling unfulfilled. This book is about a family, so you would expect some sort of emotion, some human aspect. Instead it felt like a laundry list of the family events accompanied by excessive detail about their surroundings. A moment would peak and the author simply wrote "then they understood why she was crying", except she never tells us, and there wasn't enough character development for the reader to figure it out! Of course, we knew exactly what they were eating and where they were sitting when it happened...

The fact that I put this book down in the middle of a dramatic thunderstorm and a moment of illicit relations between two characters should illustrate how unmoved I was by this book.

--

Geez...I guess it really annoyed me! Sorry for rambling on like that!

[Cameron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Damn, Bonnie Burnard. God damn.

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

"You don't just read A GOOD HOUSE; you move into it for a while." -Chatelaine

A GOOD HOUSE by Bonnie Burnard is # 1 National Best Seller and 1999 winner of the Giller Prize and the CBA People's Choice Award and was published around the world in many languages. A Good House is Bonnie Burnard's first novel. A recipient of the Marian Engel Award, Burnard lived in London, Ontario.

The story begins in 1949 in Stonebrook, Ontario and spans almost fifty years to 1997. I enjoyed the beautiful writing style of Bonnie Barnard and was totally immersed in the ordinary lives of Bill and Sylvia Chambers and their three children Patrick, Paul and Daphne. In this old fashioned generational saga, we accompany the Chambers family through childhood accidents, vacations, tragedies, death, marriages and births.
Thanks to the one who chose A GOOD HOUSE for our book club to read this month. It is the perfect book to start my reading this year and I can easily see why this book won the Giller Prize! 5 shining stars ⭐️️⭐️️⭐️️⭐️️⭐️️

[Tracey · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have to admit that I did not really enjoy this book. It reads as if it is someones musings about a family they once knew. It is full of long, rambling and poetic sentences but nothing really happens.

The plot follows the lives of an ordinary family over 50 years or so. There is some drama and tragedy and a few quite likable eccentric characters but overall it is fairly boring and ordinary.

[Shane · Rating 1 out of 5]

I couldn't finish this book, surprisingly, even though it won the Giller Prize. The slow moving start, that went on for about fifty pages before I gave up, broke all the rules that editors want these days, of hooking the reader on the first page or risk losing him forever.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. It is just a plan story about an ordinary family and that is what makes it special.

[Pat · Rating 4 out of 5]

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

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

If someone asked an AI program to write something CanLit this would be it.

-small town
-rural sensibilities
-almost all white characters
-family saga but very muted drama
-secrets and lies (but nothing too saucy)
-minimal plot

This isn't to say that Burnard writes like AI. The prose is good but when it comes to thematic explorations, this is a book that probably isn't that fresh.

Anyways, this goes towards my goal of reading past Giller Prize winners.

[Mary Jane Hele · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I started to read A Good House I was not sure it would be a "did not finish". I am going through books on my shelf and trying to read books I have bought and then neglected. So glad I kept on going past the first chapter. It is a Giller Prize winner for 1999. It is a slow moving story of a family through a few generations - really a story of ordinary people. If you haven't read it I'd say give it a chance.

[Kris (My Novelesque Life) · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 STARS

"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."
(From Amazon)

I had no expectations of this novel but WOW what a great read...and it's Canadian. A look at a family in the post-WWII. A Canadian Jennifer Haigh in my opinion. Hurry up and write more, please.

[Tracee · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's like the woman started talking and never shut up. The book was like one, long, run-on thought. She never came up for breath. Still, it was interesting enough (just) to keep me reading the book. I the end, though, I'm not sure it was really worth it. This is a book I'd recommend skipping if you're pressed for time because there's not a lot you'll get out of it.

And Daphne ticked me off with her selfish decision, keeping it a secret from everyone. There was no good reason for it, it made no sense.

[Deb · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. It's a good portrayal of the messy, loving, painful reality of 'family'.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful family saga.

This story follows the Chambers family in their small Ontario town following the second world war. They are ordinary people and at first I felt that the writer was keeping the characters at a distance, but by the time they lived their lives over 50 years the portrait felt intimate.

Death, friendship, love, childhood, parenthood, aging and ambition are among the themes explored as one would expect from this type of tale.

The era is depicted well, the 50s that seem so innocent to us now and beyond.

Well worth reading.

[Gena · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will admit the first 50 pages are slow going. I am so glad I stuck with it. I didn't read this book as much as I dwelt in it. Not a mystery, not a thriller, nothing earth shattering happens. It is a book about the complications in the ins and outs, the ups and downs, the day to day changes that life brings and how different people deal with them. There are several gems to be found in Burnard's prose. She has such a wonderful way of conveying her characters deepest feelings. Over a 50 year time span you learn about this family and I grew to really like certain of them, others not so much. I also like that the author knew exactly when to end what was for me a beautifully written story.

[Laurel Saltzman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing. If I wrote a book, this is the book I would write. Burnard is able to transform the "normal/uneventful" lives of the Chambers into a gentle 50 year drama. Beautifully written in her deceptively simple style! I wish it never ended.

[Amethyst Travis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good book.

[Peter B · Rating 3 out of 5]

Something tells me that I missed what made this a Giller Prize winning novel. While it was an enjoyable read, documenting the life of Bill Chambers and his first wife who passed away and his second wife Margaret who became the rock of the family, it seemed to be a soap opera serial. “Grace, generosity and humanity” are the words on the cover and it certainly has those elements as each character is treated with respect and given dignity even though their actions may not always be dignified.
The twist, which comes without explanation, is that Bill has not always been an easy man to live with. In fact, towards the end he is presented as a very nasty and unforgiving man but for the first two thirds of the novel none of this is even hinted at. Maybe that is the essence—that whatever is seen from outside as a good house, may not be that way at all.

[Evelyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's no surprise that this was on my read again some day shelf. I absolutely loved the lyrical writing that I floated along with, like the meandering creek described in the first chapter.
Given the opportunity, I would have chosen as Murray did, to become an honorary member of this family. They weren't perfect, they had their struggles, but they never lost sight of the fact they were family and that trumps everything.
Each chapter is a specific year, and the gaps between chapters range from 2-9 years. As in real life, things happened in those years - births, marriages, divorces - leaving the reader to wonder who this new person was or where that other person disappeared to. All was revealed in good time, the author choosing a 'show, don't tell' approach that was very effective.

[Glen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this because it won the Giller Prize, but I can't pretend to be as enthusiastic about it as the critics apparently are/were. The prose is richly descriptive, so that may be why it won, but as for the characters and characterizations, I was not drawn in very deeply. I found the characters interesting, but not much more interesting than many people I know in real life, and less interesting than some. If you want a readable family saga that has strong slice-of-life overtones, this might be a good choice. Warning to those who have dealt with adult partners or parents with dementia, there is a chapter depicting the character Bill's descent into that twilight realm, and it is troubling reading.

[Eileen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This I loved! It was an old fashioned, generational family saga, with the writing so beautiful that you were unaware somehow. The tale meandered, much as life does, with evolving relationships and emerging tolerances. There were brief hints of the typical Canadian arrogance towards Americans, but I can forgive her that. I was disappointed to learn that Bonnie Burnard's additional work consists only of a couple of short story collections and one other novel. That one looks as though it may be heavy going, but I will probably be unable to resist.

[Judy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this with my book club. It is set in southern Ontario and the day to day lives of the family described is very familiar to me. However, I found the conversational style - with run on sentences that diverged from the point - very annoying. As one of the other book clubbers said, it was like listening to your aunt at the dinner table - telling a story with all the explanations and diversions. It was generally liked (or loved) by several people in my book club.