A parent's nightmare

THE GOOD FATHER by Noah Hawley

My rating:  5 of  5 stars

What parent hasn’t wondered if mistakes made in raising their children might well have some lasting deleterious effect? In The Good Father, Noah Hawley takes this scenario to nightmarish proportions as renowned physician Dr. Paul Allen must deal with the knowledge that his son Daniel has apparently assassinated a beloved presidential candidate in cold blood. Faced with the seemingly incontrovertible evidence that his son is a calculated killer, Allen struggles to learn the truth about the crime itself. In the process, Allen is forced to acknowledge Daniel's fractured childhood and the abandonment Daniel felt when Allen divorced his mother, moved across the country, and created a new family. A book that pulled me in from the first page, The Good Father is a work that is both wholly mesmerizing and utterly disturbing.

I have deliberately chosen not to discuss plot specifics.  I felt that would detract from the tension the author manages to sustain, one of the strengths of the book. Suffice it to say that the book shifts focus subtly, at times questioning the level of Daniel’s actual guilt, but always returning to the ultimate issue of how Allen can reconcile what has happened to the boy he calls his son.

What I will say is that Noah Hawley has an amazing ability to convey what is going on inside the head of both Daniel and his father in a way that makes the reader equally invested in these very different and complicated individuals. Through Allen’s struggle to understand how his son could have committed such an act, the author searingly portrays what it is like for the families of those accused of  infamous crimes. Hawley brings to life the heart-wrenching experience of those family members who continue to love the accused in the face of overwhelming public animus and their own conflicted feelings about the destruction to innocent lives that their loved one has wrought. Consider this passage as Allen ruminates on his endeavor to accept what his son has apparently become:

“A man stands in a crowd listening to a speech about hope. He raises a handgun and pulls the trigger, and, in that moment, extinguishes hope for everyone. Who is that man, if not a monster? Do we really need to know his reasons? Read his manifesto? If understanding him makes what he did seem right, justifies it, even for a moment, then doesn’t that make the very act of understanding obscene?” (281 from ARC that is subject to change).

I have only one nit to pick.  A good portion of the middle section of the book contains detailed accounts of the actions of several well-known killers such as Timothy McVeigh,  Texas clock tower sniper Charles Whitman, and Sirhan Sirhan, in the days immediately preceding their crimes.  In all honesty, this material at times felt flat out creepy to me.  I was also somewhat put off by the frequent interruption to the feel and flow of the narrative that resulted from including this information. As the book moved past this section, though, I quickly got back into the story, and ultimately this glitch did not detract from my reading experience.

I am not one to cry when I read -- that has only happened in two instances that I can think of. But I will tell you that my hands were shaking as I finished this book. Is it possible to “love” a book that is incredibly unsettling? I’m not sure. I will say this, though. The Good Father can’t go on my top ten list of 2011 books because it will not be released until February, but I am fairly certain it is not too early to save a place for it on my top ten of 2012.

A book that will stay with you after you read the last page and a conversational gold mine for book clubs.  Read this one now.

I received an advance reader's edition of The Good Father from the publisher, Doubleday.  The Good Father will be released in February of 2012.