The Good Parents: A Novel
Feb 2009 · Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
Ebook
369
Pages
family_home
Eligible
info
About this ebook
A girl's disappearance in Australia induces a family reckoning in this "dark and lovely work . . . full of elegance and mystery" ( The New York Times Book Review).
A two-time winner of Australia's prestigious The Age Book of the Year Award, Joan London's debut novel, Gilgamesh, a New York Times Notable Book, was published to rapturous acclaim both in her native Australia and in the United States. Now, London delivers The Good Parents, a "completely absorbing" tale of mother love and the harrowing moment when a daughter spreads her wings and vanishes from her parents' orbit ( The Boston Globe).
Maya de Jong is a shy, sweet, eighteen-year-old country girl who moves to Melbourne and begins an affair with her older, married boss. When Maya's parents, Toni and Jacob, arrive for a visit, Maya is gone, and no one knows where. Maya, for reasons of her own, leaves haunting clues in late-night calls to her brother at home, carefully—and puzzlingly—avoiding detection by the two people who love her most. Ultimately, to find her daughter Toni will have to revisit a part of her own past that she thought she had shut off forever—the closest she ever came to being a lost girl herself.
The Good Parents is a stunning portrait of familial love, delusions and compromises, and how far we can drift apart in the moments between the words we speak. Enthralling, unsettling, and riveting, this "arresting novel . . . explains the attraction of bad love for young women attempting to break free" ( The Independent).
A two-time winner of Australia's prestigious The Age Book of the Year Award, Joan London's debut novel, Gilgamesh, a New York Times Notable Book, was published to rapturous acclaim both in her native Australia and in the United States. Now, London delivers The Good Parents, a "completely absorbing" tale of mother love and the harrowing moment when a daughter spreads her wings and vanishes from her parents' orbit ( The Boston Globe).
Maya de Jong is a shy, sweet, eighteen-year-old country girl who moves to Melbourne and begins an affair with her older, married boss. When Maya's parents, Toni and Jacob, arrive for a visit, Maya is gone, and no one knows where. Maya, for reasons of her own, leaves haunting clues in late-night calls to her brother at home, carefully—and puzzlingly—avoiding detection by the two people who love her most. Ultimately, to find her daughter Toni will have to revisit a part of her own past that she thought she had shut off forever—the closest she ever came to being a lost girl herself.
The Good Parents is a stunning portrait of familial love, delusions and compromises, and how far we can drift apart in the moments between the words we speak. Enthralling, unsettling, and riveting, this "arresting novel . . . explains the attraction of bad love for young women attempting to break free" ( The Independent).
A girl's disappearance in Australia induces a family reckoning in this "dark and lovely work . . . full of elegance and mystery" ( The New York Times Book Review).
A two-time winner of Australia's prestigious The Age Book of the Year Award, Joan London's debut novel, Gilgamesh, a New York Times...
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About the author
Joan London is the author of Gilgamesh, which won The Age Book of the Year Award, was short-listed for the Miles Franklin Award, and long-listed for the Orange Prize, among many other honors.
Joan London is the author of Gilgamesh, which won The Age Book of the Year Award, was short-listed for the Miles Franklin Award, and long-listed for the Orange Prize, among many other honors.
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