The Good Son
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3.2 • 9 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
From No.1 New York Times bestselling author Jacquelyn Mitchard comes the gripping, emotionally charged novel of a mother who must help her son after he is convicted of a devastating crime.
What do you do when the person you love best becomes unrecognisable to you? For Thea Demetriou, the answer is both simple and agonising: you keep loving him somehow.
Stefan was just seventeen when he went to prison for the drug-fuelled murder of his girlfriend, Belinda. Three years later, he’s released to a world that refuses to let him move on. Belinda’s mother, once Thea’s good friend, galvanises the community to rally against him to protest in her daughter’s memory. The media paints Stefan as a symbol of white privilege and indifferent justice. Neighbours, employers, even some members of Thea’s own family turn away.
Meanwhile Thea struggles to understand her son. At times, he is still the sweet boy he has always been; at others, he is a young man tormented by guilt and almost broken by his time in prison. But as his efforts to make amends meet escalating resistance and threats, Thea suspects more forces are at play than just community outrage. And if there is so much she never knew about her own son, what other secrets has she yet to uncover — especially about the night Belinda died?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The disappointing latest from Mitchard (The Deep End of the Ocean) begins with an irresistible dilemma and morphs into a long-winded, unconvincing melodrama. The setup: comfortable middle-class Wisconsin English professor Thea Demetriou must face her beloved 20-year-old son Stefan, who has just spent two years and change in prison for killing his girlfriend Belinda McCormack in a drug-induced frenzy. Formerly, Thea was friends with Belinda's mother, Jill, who now dedicates her time to leading protests outside Thea's house over Stefan's lax punishment. Mitchard sensitively details Stefan's painful reintroduction to society, the horrified response of the liberal community to Stefan's attempts at rehabilitation, and Thea's attempts to reconcile her love for her son with his crime. But Mitchard swerves disarmingly from psychological study to would-be thriller, as Thea receives mysterious calls from a young woman who says she knows what actually happened on the day of the killing, and starts to notice the presence of an unsettling hooded figure. Readers will likely figure out what's going on long before Thea does, and the plot undercuts any emotional or ethical tension the book might have had. Those hoping for an exploration of the conflict between maternal love and moral responsibility will be frustrated.
Customer Reviews
A beautifully written and compelling tale
“I was picking up my son up at the prison gates when I spotted the mother of the girl he had murdered”
A drug induced haze, ended in tragedy when then 17 year old Stefan murdered his girlfriend Belinda. After serving a three year sentence, Stefan is released, but still held prisoner within the community. Still grieving and with no memory of committing the crime, all Stefan can do is accept that he was responsible for her death and try to move on, but when his mother Thea starts receiving anonymous calls from a woman stating she was there and knows what really happened that night, she sets out to prove her sons innocence.
Beautifully written, The Good Son is a poignant, complex and compelling tale of family, redemption and a mother’s love. Told through Thea’s eyes, the story is multi-layered and while there are times that is moves at a slightly slower pace, its outcome more than makes up for this. A very thought provoking tale that is well worth reading.