The Golden Boy
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4.1 • 47 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
"The Golden Boy is not just an astoundingly ambitious novel, but also—and more importantly, in my opinion—a wildly entertaining one, by turns hilarious and heartbreaking. Bravo, Patricia Finn!" ―Richard Russo, author of Empire Falls and the North Bath Trilogy
An unexpected letter sends a man and his wife into their pasts—and offers them both a shot at redemption.
After an involuntary retirement from his high-flying Hollywood career, Stafford Hopkins has retreated to a luxury estate on Maui, along with his wife Agnes, both grimly resigned to life in a paradise where neither feels fully at home.
Stafford is ready to retreat into himself, too, when a letter arrives with shocking news. Stafford has been named guardian of four children he didn’t know existed: the grandchildren of his late childhood friend, Bobby Shepherd, whose ghost Stafford can no longer ignore.
Returning to both the hardscrabble farming town and the dark secret he’d tried to forget for decades, Stafford is forced to confront his past in order to rebuild his future—and to redirect the fates of his family and the four young people suddenly in his care.
Slyly funny and deeply moving, The Golden Boy is a captivating debut about love, mercy, and second chances.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A disgraced TV executive and his wife retire to Maui, where their life of leisure is interrupted by news that they've been named guardians to a late friend's four grandchildren, in ghostwriter Finn's uneven debut. The first third focuses on the couple as they fumble around and bicker in the wake of 58-year-old Stafford Hopkins's forced retirement (the reasons for his ouster are vaguely explained later). When a letter from a lawyer informs him that he has been named guardian for the four grandchildren of his childhood best friend, Bobby Shepherd, who died in an accident when they were teens and Bobby's girlfriend was pregnant, he's flooded with memories. Agnes protests, given that their first run at parenting resulted in a strained relationship with their daughter, and Stafford agrees, but he travels back to his small Canadian hometown to set up a fund for the children. Interspersed with his return are long flashbacks to his upbringing, including his idyllic boyhood with Bobby and their falling-out when they were teens. Finn crafts a convincing depiction of an aging married couple, who feel overwhelmed by the effort it would take "to undo the many years of battering and need that had replaced love," but the listless plotting and delayed revelations wear thin. This one doesn't quite hang together.
Customer Reviews
Humanity on Full Display
The charachters in this book come fully to life through the masterfully written dialogues. Ms Finn is able to paint a clear picture with just a few strokes, words that come across as very telling and “real.” The family story unfolds like a Greek tragedy, but we are uplifted again and again by the humanity of it all, and the soothing ending seemed just right to me. Thank you, Patricia Finn.
Side Stories
I get that each character’s history provides empathy for each but I don’t understand the author’s excursions into historical asides. Enjoyed the book, but could have done without the historical asides.