A Good House

"For the Chambers family of Stonebrook, Ontario, the year 1949 is filled with promise. The post-war boom and hope for the future color every facet of life: for Bill, a hardware store manager, his wife, Sylvia, and their three young children, Patrick, Paul and Daphne, possibilities seem limitless.". "In the fifty years that follow, these possibilities narrow into lives etched by character, fate and circumstance - beginning with Sylvia's untimely death, which marks her family indelibly. Daphne unabashedly follows an unconventional path and embraces the consequences, while older son Patrick discovers that for him happiness requires a series of compromises. Paul finds the perfect marriage but it yields an imperfect child, and Bill confronts the onset of old age less gracefully than anticipated. Throughout, his second wife, Margaret, remains, surprisingly, the family stronghold. As the generations intertwine, pull apart and come together again, family members spread out from their small town into the larger world, and the bonds deepen and widen, sometimes fraying.

Prize history

• Giller Prize

  1999

  Winner