Son (novel)

Last updated
Son
Son by Lois Lowry.jpg
Author Lois Lowry
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Series The Giver Quartet
Genre Young adult fiction
Publisher HarperCollins
Publication date
October 2, 2012
Media typePrint (hardback)
Pages393
ISBN 978-0-54788-720-3
Preceded by Messenger  

Son is a 2012 young adult dystopian novel by American author Lois Lowry. The fourth and final book in The Giver Quartet , the story takes place during and after the first book in the series, The Giver . The story follows Claire, the birth mother of Gabriel, who was marked for "release" in The Giver before being taken out of the community by Jonas. Claire, obsessed with finding her son, embarks on a journey out of the community in an attempt to follow and find him. [1] The novel explores themes of love, obligation, sacrifice, and loss. [2] Son received mostly positive reviews from critics.

Contents

Plot

Son is written in three parts, each with a subtitle: Before, Between, and Beyond.

Before

Before takes place in the same location, "The Community," and at approximately the same time as The Giver. Claire's assigned occupation in the community is Birth Mother by artificial insemination, and her primary responsibility is to give birth. At the beginning of the novel, Claire is nearing the end of her pregnancy. She gives birth to her child at 14, but complications during delivery necessitate birth by Cesarean section. Three weeks after giving birth, Claire reports to the birthing unit office and is reassigned to work at the Fish Hatchery. After she leaves, she inquires after the baby she birthed, and the officer informs her that the baby is healthy and accidentally informs Claire that the child is male and number Thirty-Six in his year.

Claire retains curiosity for her son as she begins work at the Fish Hatchery and begins casually volunteering at the infant nurturing center to see him. As she plays with Thirty-Six, she quickly grows to love him, a feeling she finds that she alone experiences. She later realizes that all adult community members take pills that suppress emotions. As a Birth Mother, she was instructed not to take the pills, but the matter was overlooked in her reassignment. Claire is told that Thirty-Six is going "Elsewhere" for his failure to thrive according to the community's standards. Before she can do anything, her son is saved and taken away by Jonas, the protagonist from The Giver . Claire attempts to follow them on a supply boat, but it soon encounters a strong storm and is shipwrecked.

Between

In Between, Claire is rescued from the beach on which the supply boat shipwrecked. She is taken in by a midwife, Alys, while she tries to regain her memory, since she has suffered from temporary amnesia after the wreck. Once her memories return, Lame Einar is a man who trains her to be able to escape the village they are in. She is forced to climb a steep cliff up out of the valley. Then, she meets an evil entity, Trademaster, which offers to take her to her son if she trades her youth. Claire agrees and is turned into an old woman, and her son, Gabriel "Gabe", is located.

Beyond

In Beyond, Gabe is now a young man with the power to see into other people's minds for a split second, "veering." Gabe is also curious about his old home and his real mother.

Meanwhile, Jonas notices Claire, finds out that she is the mother of Gabe, and convinces Gabe that Claire is his mother, aged by the evil Trademaster.

Gabe is then told that the Trademaster must be killed. He meets the Trademaster, veers into its body, and understands that the Trademaster is dying from starvation because he feeds off his victims' suffering. Gabe then tells the Trademaster of all the people that he has tried to destroy and how they are living happily again. That destroys the Trademaster, and when Gabe returns home, Claire has turned back into a young woman.

Themes and development

Themes in Son include those of love, obligation, sacrifice, and loss. [2] Lowry had originally not planned on writing Son or any sequels to The Giver, but she was inspired to write the story after she "decided to describe what became of him [Gabriel] as he grew up." [3] Initially intending to center the book on Gabriel and his determination to discover his past, Lowry instead found herself being drawn to write more about Claire. She stated, "I wasn't aware of it at the time... but when I was writing of her yearning to find her boy, that was coming out of my own yearning to have my own son back." [4]

Critical reception

Reception for Son has been mostly positive, with the book gaining starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews and Booklist. [5] [6] A reviewer for The Washington Post wrote that the book had a "quiet climax", stating that the ultimate "power of this parable" is that "It confronts us with some of the choices we are making and plays out the consequences." [7] Robin Wasserman of The New York Times commented that Son did well as a standalone novel and praised Lowry's descriptions in the book. [2] The Boston Globe criticized the book's "over-elaborations and pacing" while writing that "overall the journey is still worth the effort". [8] The AV Club commented that while the book could have used more world-building, it is also "just plain good young-adult literature". [9]

Related Research Articles

<i>The Giver</i> 1993 novel by Lois Lowry

The Giver is a 1993 American young adult dystopian novel written by Lois Lowry, set in a society which at first appears to be utopian but is revealed to be dystopian as the story progresses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lois Lowry</span> American writer

Lois Ann Lowry is an American writer. She is the author of several books for children and young adults, including The Giver Quartet, Number the Stars, and Rabble Starkey. She is known for writing about difficult subject matters, dystopias, and complex themes in works for young audiences.

<i>The City of Ember</i> 2003 novel by Jeanne Du Prau

The City of Ember is a post-apocalyptic novel by Jeanne DuPrau that was published in 2003. The story is about Ember, a post-apocalyptic underground city threatened by aging infrastructure and corruption. The young protagonists, Lina Mayfleet and Doon Harrow, follow clues left behind by the original builders of the City of Ember, to safety in the outside world.

<i>Gathering Blue</i> 2000 novel by Lois Lowry

Gathering Blue is a young adult-dystopian novel written by Lois Lowry and was published on September 25, 2000. A companion book to The Giver (1993), it is set in the same future time period and universe, treats some of the same themes, and is followed by Messenger (2004) and Son (2012) in The Giver Quartet.

<i>Messenger</i> (novel) 2004 novel by Lois Lowry

Messenger is a 2004 young adult dystopian novel by American author Lois Lowry, as is the third installment of The Giver Quartet, which began with the 1993 Newbery Medal-winning novel The Giver. The story takes place about six years after the events of The Giver, and the events of Gathering Blue, the preceding novel in the series. Characters from both of the previous books reappear in Messenger and give the novels a stronger continuity.

<i>Number the Stars</i> 1989 novel by Lois Lowry

Number the Stars is a work of historical fiction by the American author Lois Lowry about the escape of a family of Jews from Copenhagen, Denmark, during World War II.

<i>Mama Floras Family</i> 1998 American film

Mama Flora's Family is a 1997 historical fiction novel by Alex Haley and David Stevens. The story spans from the 1920s to the 1970s as it follows Flora, a daughter of poor black Mississippi sharecroppers, and her descendants. Haley died before completing the novel, with Stevens finishing the story line.

<i>Locked in Time</i> Book by Lois Duncan

Locked in Time is a 1985 suspense novel by Lois Duncan. The story centers around Nore, a seventeen-year-old girl who moves into a new home with her father and her new stepfamily. Soon after she meets her stepmother, stepbrother, and stepsister for the first time, Nore begins to suspect something is not quite right about her stepfamily. The author states that the novel explores some of the issues surrounding having eternal life. Duncan says she developed the idea for the novel when one of her daughters was thirteen years old and was having issues with her body image. Duncan mentions that her daughter was "taking everything out" on her, and she began to wonder what it would be like if her daughter never outgrew her adolescence.

<i>Anastasia on Her Own</i>

Anastasia on Her Own (1985) is a young-adult novel by Lois Lowry. It is part of a series of books that Lowry wrote about Anastasia and her younger brother Sam.

<i>A Garden of Earthly Delights</i> 1967 novel by Joyce Carol Oates

A Garden of Earthly Delights is a novel by Joyce Carol Oates, published by Vanguard in 1967. Her second book published, it is the first of her series known as the "Wonderland Quartet". It was a finalist for the 1968 annual U.S. National Book Award for Fiction.

<i>A Summer to Die</i> Novel by Lois Lowry

A Summer to Die was Lois Lowry's first novel.

<i>Bloodchild and Other Stories</i> Short story collection by Octavia E. Butler

Bloodchild and Other Stories is the only collection of science fiction stories and essays written by American writer Octavia E. Butler. Each story and essay features an afterword by Butler. "Bloodchild", the title story, won the Hugo Award and Nebula Award.

<i>The Knife of Never Letting Go</i> 2008 novel by Patrick Ness

The Knife of Never Letting Go is a young-adult science fiction novel written by British-American author Patrick Ness. It was published by Walker Books on 5 May 2008. It is the first book in the Chaos Walking series, followed by The Ask and the Answer and Monsters of Men. The story follows Todd Hewitt, a 12-year-old boy who runs away from Prentisstown, a town where everyone can hear everyone else's thoughts, after learning of a secret about its past.

Maternal death in fiction is a common theme encountered in literature, movies, and other media.

<i>Between Shades of Gray</i> 2011 young adult novel by Ruta Sepetys

Between Shades of Gray, a New York Times Best Seller, is the debut novel of Lithuanian-American novelist Ruta Sepetys. It follows the Stalinist repressions of the mid-20th century and follows the life of a teenage girl Lina as she is deported from her native Lithuania with her mother and younger brother, and the journey they take to a Gulag labor camp in Siberia. It was nominated for the 2012 CILIP Carnegie Medal and has been translated into more than 27 languages.

<i>The History of Us</i>

The History of Us is a 2013 novel by Leah Stewart. The book released on January 8, 2013, through Touchstone Books and concerns three siblings who must review both their past and their relationship with each other after their aunt plans to sell their childhood home. Stewart began writing the book due to an interest in the "dynamic between coming to see what’s good about the place where you are living and continuing to feel like you’ve been displaced from where you should be".

<i>The Giver</i> (film) 2014 film by Phillip Noyce

The Giver is a 2014 American dystopian drama film directed by Phillip Noyce and starring Jeff Bridges, Brenton Thwaites, Odeya Rush, Meryl Streep, Alexander Skarsgård, Katie Holmes, Cameron Monaghan, Taylor Swift, and Emma Tremblay. The film is based on the 1993 young adult novel of the same name by Lois Lowry. The Giver premiered on August 11, 2014, and was released theatrically in the United States on August 15, 2014. It grossed $67 million on a $25 million budget and received a People's Choice Award nomination for "Favorite Dramatic Movie".

The Giver Quartet is a series of four books about a dystopian world by Lois Lowry. The quartet consists of The Giver (1993), Gathering Blue (2000), Messenger (2004), and Son (2012). The first book won the 1994 Newbery Medal and has sold more than 10 million copies. The story takes place in the world of The Giver. Each book has a different protagonist, but is set in the same futuristic era.

<i>The Knife and the Butterfly</i> 2011 novel by Ashley Hope Pérez

The Knife and the Butterfly is a young adult novel by Ashley Hope Pérez, published in 2011 by Carolrhoda Books. The novel, which explores the lives of two teenage gang members in Houston, a Hispanic boy named Azael and a White girl named Lexi, is based on a 2006 gang-related death in that city.

References

  1. Williams, John (October 12, 2012). "Book Review Podcast: The Final Book in Lois Lowry's 'Giver' Quartet". The New York Times . Retrieved October 19, 2012.
  2. 1 2 3 Wasserman, Robin (October 11, 2012). "The Searcher". The New York Times . Retrieved October 19, 2012.
  3. Dar, Mahnaz. "Lois Lowry Talks About Her Latest Novel, 'Son'". School Library Journal. Retrieved 19 October 2012.
  4. Kois, Dan. "The Children's Author Who Actually Listens to Children". New York Times. Retrieved 19 October 2012.
  5. "SON by Lois Lowry | Kirkus Book Reviews". 15 September 2012. Retrieved 18 October 2012.
  6. Cooper, Irene (1 June 2012). "Son, by Lois Lowry | Booklist Online". Booklist Online. Retrieved 18 October 2012.
  7. Quattlebaum, Mary (September 28, 2012). "Book World: 'Son' by Lois Lowry concludes series that began with 'The Giver'". Washington Post. Retrieved 19 October 2012.
  8. Rosenberg, Liz (October 3, 2012). "'Son' by Lois Lowry". Boston Globe. Retrieved 19 October 2012.
  9. McFarland, Kevin. "Lois Lowry's new Son finally concludes and resolves the classic story of The Giver". AV Club. Retrieved 19 October 2012.
(10 out of 10 book)