Son by Lois Lowry
My rating: 3 of 5 stars Empathy with the Devil, or "A Mum Always Loves Her Child" The final member of Lois Lowry's Giver Quartet, Son (2012), is a recapitulation of the main genres of the earlier three novels, being itself comprised of three 'books,' the first an sf dystopia like The Giver (1993), the second a post-apocalypse story like Gathering Blue (2000), and the third a Christian allegory like Messenger (2004). Son is the capstone to the Quartet, but Lowry includes in it enough backstory from the first three works to ensure that readers new to her series can understand this one on its own. 'Book One: Before' begins about a year before the events of The Giver, and depicts the appalling emotional and reproductive control that the community Elders exercise over their people. Claire is an innocent 14-year-old girl who's been assigned to be a 'Birthmother' without being told what it entails. Like all 'Productions' in the community, hers is achieved artificially. This ensures more control over reproduction and is necessary anyway because the emotion-suppressing medication everyone must take at the onset of puberty makes sexual and other love impossible. During deliveries the 'Vessels' are blindfolded to prevent them from seeing their 'Products.' Claire's difficult delivery requires her doctors to cut her belly open, and she realizes that they care more for the Product than for the Vessel. Because of such complications, Claire is decertified as Birthmother and assigned a new career in the Fish Hatchery. There is no question of her seeing her Product, because this is never done. Due to an oversight by the Elders in charge of her case, Claire does not go back on her medication and thus feels a deep loss, sadness, and loneliness. Occasionally volunteering at the Nurturing Center, she is able to spend some precious time with her Product, her boy, number 36--concealing that she is his mother. This is the best section in the novel: devastating. 'Book Two: Between' depicts Claire ending up in a small, unindustrialized fishing village, learning there about seasons, precipitation, colors, animals, illness, and love (none of which were present in her old community), resolving to find her son, and undergoing (with the guidance of a sweet, lame young man) intense physical training to become able to attempt to climb a forbidding cliff to leave the fishing village. If successful, she'll have to decide whether or not to make an appalling bargain with the satanic Trademaster from Messenger. This is the second-best section: compelling. 'Book Three: Beyond' is narrated from the point of view of 15-year-old or so Gabe in the Village of Messenger as he works on his pet project, making a boat in which to sail back to the community that Jonas rescued him from 14 or so years ago, all to find his Birthmother, who, unbeknownst to him is in Village watching him with a 'fierce, knowing intimacy.' Jonas, who can see Beyond, senses Trademaster malevolently monitoring Gabe. Will Gabe be able to mature into a sun of a son? Son, like the quartet as a whole, then, morphs away from a political or social exploration of dystopia into an allegory of human nature confronting evil while being enriched by love, especially maternal love. This is the third-best section: too obviously and easily allegorical. Does Son bring the quartet together and conclude it satisfyingly? Yes--but I found it less ambiguous than The Giver, less absorbing than Gathering Blue, less eucatasrophic than Messenger, and less tight than the previous three novels. Lowry summarizes a bit more of the first part in the second and third parts than is necessary. And like most YA (still today) her novel lacks people of color and different sexual orientations and after all ends up rather conservatively regarding gender with a Son rather than a Daughter. (Indeed, despite the presence of strong Kira in Gathering Blue and Claire here, the saviors and leaders of Lowry's quartet are male.) There are also some things that don't hold together so well. It's hard to believe that Jonas' high tech community would not have made more of an impact on the less developed communities or vice versa. Given their close relationship in The Giver, I'd expect Jonas and Gabe to be living together in Village (even if when Jonas showed up with Gabe he didn't think he was mature enough to raise a baby). Perhaps plot is overruling character here. Mind you, Son is a strong novel! Lowry avoids typical YA moves like romantic triangles, violent action scenes, and obvious punishments for villains. I like Gabe calming a stormy river by saying, 'I cannot kill.' I like the supernatural gifts of the main characters being less about power and more about insight. (Gabe's gift is 'veering,' an extreme form of empathy.) She depicts flawed but essentially good people we care about. She excels at dramatic irony, as with Gabe's burning desire to go find his mother when she's living in Village with him. Bernadette Dunne reads the audiobook perfectly. Apart from doing a creepy malevolent Trademaster, she doesn't change her voice dramatically for characters of different genders or ages or cultures, but just imbues each character's voice with the appropriate emotions and agendas etc. for each moment. Readers of the first three books MUST read this last one, and though I still think The Giver should have been left to stand alone in its austere ambiguity--I am glad to have read all of the quartet, filled as it is of limpid writing, appealing characters, moving stories, and serious themes. View all my reviews
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Jefferson Peters
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