A Good House: A Novel

A Good House begins in 1949 in Stonebrook Ontario home to the Chambers family. The postwar boom and hope for the future color every facet of life: the possibilities seem limitless for Bill his wife Sylvia and their three children.. In the fifty years that follow the possibilities narrow. Sylvias untimely death marks her family indelibly but in ways only time will reveal. Pauls perfect marriage yields an imperfect child. Daphne unabashedly follows an unconventional path while Patrick discovers that his happiness requires a series of compromises. Bill confronts the onset of old age less gracefully than anticipated and throughout his second wife Margaret remains surprisingly the family anchor.. This extraordinarily moving and beautifully crafted first novel was a number one bestseller in Canada where it won one of the countrys most prestigious literary awards the Giller Prize in 1999.