The Good Father

Feb 15, 2012 Laura rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012-mt-bookpile

The blurbage suggested that this was going to be like We Need to Talk About Kevin or Nineteen Minutes: how does a family cope when a child has done the unthinkable? And to some extent the plot does live up to that premise. Dr. Paul Allen's life is turned upside down when his son Daniel kills Senator Seagram, the leading Democratic presidential candidate. Of course Paul wants to believe that there's no way that Daniel could have done this - there must be a conspiracy, or his son was brainwashed,...more

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May 01, 2012 Merilyn Porter rated it 4 of 5 stars

In the same vain as books such as We need to talk about Kevin, The Good Father explores the consequences of the assassination of a presidential candidate on the family of the perpetrator, in particular his father. Senator Seagram is gunned down by 20 year old Daniel Allen and along with his death goes the hope and optimism of millions of disillusioned Americans. For Daniel’s father the tragedy is far, far greater and he finds cannot acknowledge his son’s responsibility or accept that his son cou...more

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Oct 01, 2012 Agatha rated it 4 of 5 stars

For readers who liked We Need To Talk About Kevin and/or Defending Jacob, this is another good one. I think I actually liked this one the best (with WNtTaK a close second, and DJ the least, b/c, DJ kind of rambles on about some things and then doesn’t flesh out other things you might have wanted him to focus on more). I liked how this one had alternating chapters between the son’s and the father’s point of view, interspersed with chapters about serial killers and/or assassins, terrorists, etc. i...more

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Mar 06, 2013 Chris rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a 5-star read.

Well researched and constructed - fast-paced and never, never sentimental.

Reads like a TV thriller but treats the subject with respect.

Excellent.

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May 16, 2013 Jim rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Well written, entertaining, informative. The plot revolves around the reflections and questioning guilt of a father when he discovers that his estranged son is potentially guilty of carrying out a notorious assassination of a well-loved American senator. Did he or didn't he do it? Was the father somehow to blame? Should he have divorced the mother? Should he have followed his career to the East Coast abandoning mother and son in California? Should he have been there more for the boy? Listened mo...more

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May 12, 2013 Jules rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: american-fiction, contemporary-fiction, fiction, modern-day-fiction

I am always very open-minded about the books I read but this one just didn’t comply with what it said on the tin for me and proved to be a disappointment all the way.

On the premise that this was meant to be bloody damn good read (if a plethora of reviews are anything to go by – (and yes, I know that reviews are not ‘god’)), this book just didn’t really do it for me from the offset. If I can put it down to anything, in my own head the characterisation just wasn’t right and the father and son pro...more I am always very open-minded about the books I read but this one just didn’t comply with what it said on the tin for me and proved to be a disappointment all the way.

On the premise that this was meant to be bloody damn good read (if a plethora of reviews are anything to go by – (and yes, I know that reviews are not ‘god’)), this book just didn’t really do it for me from the offset. If I can put it down to anything, in my own head the characterisation just wasn’t right and the father and son protagonists were just not believable or authentic for me.

The father Dr Paul Allen starts of the narration of the book as just another regular American dad of a disjointed but happy family. He lives in Westport Connecticut with his second wife and ten year old twins. As far as he knows his son Daniel from his first marriage is travelling around the States, until he suddenly and shockingly finds out that Daniel is prime suspect for the assassination of the front-running American presidential candidate at a rally in Los Angeles.

What follows from the opening chapters of the book is a series of ruminations and reflections of what it is to be a family and on what it takes to raise a murderer. Does nature or nature prevail or is a murderer’s psychological profile just down to chance? Yada, yada so yes, like some critics chart, the chimes with Lionel Shriver’s ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’ are indeed rife. Ding dong.

I know books like this are meant to be serious and poignant but, for me, the read seemed too formulaic and predictable. Dr Allen seems to spend three quarters of the book in denying away the possibility of his own son committing such a crime with the last quarter or so coming around to the fact that his son is indeed guilty. There are no plot twists as such and, as a result, it lacks any passion not to mention real conviction. The tone is generally quite passive and this has the effect of making the whole story seem quite naive.

As far as the writing goes, I would say that Hawley is more than capable of structuring meaning and paragraphs and, at times, has a nice, poetic turn of phrase when some of his characters analyse and start to understand ‘life’.

Ultimately though, it was a lame book for me and proved to be one where the reading ticked over but without any great passion or compulsion to get to the end.

Overrated books are such a let-down!!

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May 01, 2013 Grace rated it 4 of 5 stars

Paul Allen è un reumatologo di successo, ha una bella famiglia e una soddisfacente vita sociale. Ha anche un matrimonio fallito alle spalle da cui è nato un figlio, Daniel, ma ha saputo rialzarsi senza troppa fatica. Finché una tranquilla serata davanti alla tv si trasformerà per Paul nell'inizio di un incubo: i telegiornali impazziti parlando di un attentato a uno dei favoriti per la candidatura presidenziale e il colpevole viene identificato in suo figlio Daniel. Lo shock è tremendo ma l'istin...more

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Feb 25, 2013 Sharon Mcalister rated it 3 of 5 stars

The Good Father is a well written book. My only quarrel with the writing is that the author tends to be somewhat verbose. This is the story of a medical doctor who is living in New York with his second wife
and twin sons. He is shocked to learn that the Democratic candidate for president has been shot and
killed in California. He is more than shocked when his nineteen year old son from his first marriage, Daniel, is arrested and charged with the murder. The book uses alternate narratives from the...more

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Feb 24, 2013 Kelly added it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. "What? You want to know the reason he pulled the trigger? To understand it? What made him do it? Who is he really, deep down inside? But don't you see? Understanding the reason makes killing reasonable. You're looking for justification that somehow, some way, your son did something noble. Or if not noble, at least relatable. But he didn't. And you have to accept that. You will never understand him."

This felt earned to me, this bathroom moment--a little deus ex machina, perhaps, but emotionally...more "What? You want to know the reason he pulled the trigger? To understand it? What made him do it? Who is he really, deep down inside? But don't you see? Understanding the reason makes killing reasonable. You're looking for justification that somehow, some way, your son did something noble. Or if not noble, at least relatable. But he didn't. And you have to accept that. You will never understand him."

This felt earned to me, this bathroom moment--a little deus ex machina, perhaps, but emotionally it worked. But I think this gets at the heart of fiction, both the writing and the reading of it--we write and read to illuminate others and to tease out their thoughts and motivations. And maybe it's the part of the writer that wants to play God or maybe it's the part that is, at heart, a humanist, but something beckons about those worst acts, those worst people: to redeem them with the power of your words and your perspective and give them reason and humanity. To show that they're complex, that they're loved, that they're like you in so many ways.

And then--if you're honest about it--you come up against that very wall (understanding the reason makes ___________ reasonable) and I think that's maybe the great moral struggle of fiction. There's that war between the instinct to humanize and sympathize and defend--to truly know a character--and the instinct to seek honesty and truth about evil and suffering and pain. So the heart of the question, then, is: does fiction allow us to fully inhabit another person?

In a way, I think, this one lets you off easy as a reader--Danny wanted and had chosen to die, and Paul finds some kind of peace in that in the end. It would have been different if Danny had changed his mind and gotten scared, if he weren't so calm and detached and resolved. (Or if we saw Danny's young brothers' perspectives, or Elaine's.) As a reader I was grateful for that, because it spared me, but I don't necessarily feel like it's the whole story or any closer to some kind of answer--though it did feel softer and kinder and won't haunt me quite as much.

I borrowed this from the library, but I'll probably go buy it now to have in my shelves at home.(less)

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Nov 17, 2012 Elizabeth rated it 2 of 5 stars

From Amazon description: " Chief of Rheumatology at Columbia Presbyterian, Dr. Paul Allen's specialty is diagnosing patients with conflicting symptoms, patients other doctors have given up on. He lives a contented life in Westport with his second wife and their twin sons—hard won after a failed marriage earlier in his career that produced a son named Daniel. In the harrowing opening scene of this provocative and affecting novel, Dr. Allen is home with his family when a televised news report anno...more

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Oct 02, 2012 Chris Witkowski rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a gut wrenching story told from a father's perspective about his 20 year old son who has been accused of assassinating a presidential candidate. As would be expected, Dr. Paul Allen absolutely can't believe that his son, the gentle Daniel, could ever do such a thing. So he begins a long quest to find the truth, only to learn some very painful things about his relationship with his son. Interspersed with the story is some fascinating historical background on famous assassins - Hinckly, Ch...more

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Sep 19, 2012 Katherine Granich rated it 3 of 5 stars

I read We Need to Talk about Kevin (and I've been trying to scrub it from my brain ever since). This tells a somewhat similar tale, but from a father's perspective, and without the majority of the gory childhood yuck moments that made WNtTaK so indescribably uncomfortable. I never really felt like I got too close to the characters that I knew them, despite the first-person narration. But it was attention-keeping, well-written, at times shining a spotlight on my own parental neuroses and inadequa...more

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Jul 26, 2012 Walt rated it 4 of 5 stars

"The father of a man who assassinates a presidential candidate tries to make sense of his son's crime in Hawley's gripping new novel. Dr. Paul Allen is a successful rheumatologist happily living with his second wife and their twin sons in a chic Connecticut enclave. Contact with Daniel, his aloof son from a previous marriage, is sporadic, and when Daniel drops out of Vassar in his first year to 'see the country,' Dr. Allen shrugs it off as a youthful foible; he believes that shuffling between pa...more

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Jul 17, 2012 Penny rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

This is the kind of book that I will keep thinking about for a long time. It was a great read. Part suspense, part history, part family trauma...all around fantastic. From the very beginning of the story, the plot pulls you in and I found it hard to put down. I could sympathize with the characters..the writing style was meant to make the reader feel like we were really inside the heads of both father and son so we could understand their actions based on their feelings. It was like we witnessed a...more

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Jun 27, 2012 Ciara rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2012

a respected rheumatologist paul allen experiences the shock of a lifetime one evening when he sees a news bulletin: someone has assassinated popular senator jay seagram at a political rally, & it looks like his disaffected son daniel is the assassin. paul can't believe that his son would kill someone. he devotes himself to finding the real gunman, or uncovering the conspiracy under which his son was brainwashed by seagram's political rivals. the book is mostly from paul's perspective, inters...more a respected rheumatologist paul allen experiences the shock of a lifetime one evening when he sees a news bulletin: someone has assassinated popular senator jay seagram at a political rally, & it looks like his disaffected son daniel is the assassin. paul can't believe that his son would kill someone. he devotes himself to finding the real gunman, or uncovering the conspiracy under which his son was brainwashed by seagram's political rivals. the book is mostly from paul's perspective, interspersed with the occasional chapter that is framed as daniel's psych evaluation, pages from his journal, & sometimes even just his point of view. the inconsistencies in narration are kind of annoying, because the reader then knows more about daniel's thoughts & motivations than paul does, even though paul's chapters are all about trying to find information about daniel's thoughts & motivations.

but more annoying than that is all the assassin trivia sprinkled through the book. when paul first hears about the assassination, he immediately starts reminiscing about the arizona "meet your congressperson" shooting. he's all, "what was that congresswoman's name? giffords?" but then goes into full-flow for literally like six pages of dense text about jared loughner's (the gunman) psychiatric history, childhood, mug shot, etc etc etc. like...we're supposed to believe that paul can barely even remember the name of the congresswoman who was shot in the head & survived, but he knows all this minutiae about jared loughner, such as the fact that local bank tellers used to keep their fingers on the security button when he came into the bank because he was just that creepy? if we are to believe that paul is this much of an assassination buff, it suddenly becomes less & less implausible that his kid would grow up to assassinate someone. not that being obsessed with assassinations means your kid might kill someone, but i did think it was dehumanizing to the victims to be like, "you know...ol' what's-her-face...giffords?" but then go on & on & ON about jared loughner. that level of fascination with murderers combined with the kind of inattention to their victims is the kind of thing that starts to make a person seem kind of creepy.

& in a lot of places where hawley insist on boring our pants off with assassin trivia, he writes really weird shit. like, daniel travels to austin, texas & volunteers with seagram's campaign about a year before the assassination. while there, he gets obsessed with the charles withman clock tower sniper murders. the history of these murders is kind of told from whitman's perspective, including things like, "he experiences an almost sexual thrill as he took aim." um...really? whitman was killed by police during the attack & so was never interviewed about his motives or how he felt while he was killing people. suggesting that he felt a sexual thrill is pure editorializing on hawley's part, & kind of says more about him than it does about whitman. i did not like.

at another spot in the book, daniel becomes agitated & upset when he takes a date to a seagram rally & seagram happens to sneak a peek at his date's cleavage as he's making the rounds, shaking hands. daniel is all, "he's not a great man. he's victim to the same base perversion as a dirty truck driver." but just a few pages earlier, daniel himself narrated that he had a difficult time looking at his date's lips without imagining them wrapped around his penis. let's just leave aside the fact that i, as a woman, really do not want to read shit like that. i understand that part of sexual attraction is wanting the object of your affections to do sexual things with you, but i just really don't want to consider that my boyfriend sometimes is imagining me giving him a blow job while we're, like, in line at the bank, or discussing a car repair or whatever. even if that's what he's doing, i just don't want to hear about it. & it pissed me the fuck off that it's apparently okay for daniel to have these little fantasies, but if someone else looks at his date's boobs, he has to kill them. perhaps this was simply the necessary trigger for an already unhinged mind to go ahead & commit an act as grievous as murder, & it was meant to illustrate the lack of rational thinking in play. but to me, it read as the normalization of misogyny, like dude readers were supposed to read it & be like, "oh yeah, of course i would want to kill someone who looked at my date's boobs," like he owns her boobs or something. don't get me wrong, it would be great if dudes could hold themselves back from scoping out the boobs of strangers, but when they slip up, ladies don't really need their male partners going into grizzly bear protection mode, like it's a slight against THEM that another man would be ogling their woman. it reminds me of an ex-boyfriend who told me, "it's natural for a guy to be protective of his girlfriend. it's like...he's protecting his womb, you know?" once i got done puking, we pretty much broke up.

& it was also annoying because at one point, daniel goes to a swimming hole & observes all the young ladies there in bikinis & thinks to himself, "how can they walk around on display like that, with their boobs there for everyone to see?" dude. they're boobs. they're difficult to hide sometimes. especially if you want to go swimming! get over it.

& don't even get me started on the whole conspiracy plotline. "daniel was caught trainhopping with a guy who used to be in special forces/black ops! surely this guy spent the train ride hypnotizing my son to kill senators!" ugh.

basically, i just need to not read books by or about men. i'll read one, it will be packed with casual misogyny, & i'll say, "never again!" then i'll decide that i'm being too severe & i'll give another once a chance & the same damn thing happens. do authors like hawley not consider the fact that women might read their books too? (less)

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Apr 25, 2012 Doreen rated it 4 of 5 stars

How do the parents of individuals who commit horrendous acts against people come to understand and accept the actions of their child? Do you continue to love and support them or are there circumstances under which actions are so evil that you cease to care. I have often thought about these situations when incidents occur and we read those headlines and see the stories on the nightly news. In this novel Paul Allen's twenty year old son assassinates the candidate for the presidency. He struggles t...more

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Apr 23, 2012 Edith rated it 3 of 5 stars

I liked this book for the cautionary tale it is to divorced parents who relegate their kids to the shuttle back and forth thing when they make a new marriage and the poor kid becomes a ping pong ball in no-man's land. Everyone likes to make the point about how adaptable kids are and that most of them survive the divorce of their parents in perfectly fine shape, but this book speaks to the case where this isn't necessarily so.

This book portrays a suffering father whose young adult son has commit...more

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Apr 18, 2012 Stephanie Driscoll rated it 5 of 5 stars

“The Good Father” by Noah Hawley is one of those books that I’ve been trying to find for a while. First off, the story itself is brilliant and the main character, Dr. Paul Allen completely sneaks up on you. The author is able to make this main character so quiet and so unassuming that it is able to become the perfect light for a father to be questioning his son in. He is neither too in your face, or too outraged. He is instead, a man trying to understand, through logic, the ways in which his son...more

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Apr 16, 2012 Linda rated it 3 of 5 stars

Paul Allen, a successful doctor, remarried with twin sons has another son, Daniel from his first marriage. Daniel travels to see Paul and his family throughout his childhood and Paul thinks Daniel is unfocused but otherwise a normal 20 year-old as he has dropped out of college and is traveling in the U.S. going from job to job. But Daniel is not fine as he is now accused of killing a presidential candidate. Paul works passionately to prove Daniel's innocence and becomes obsessed with the case an...more

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Apr 15, 2012 Aaron Mcquiston rated it 3 of 5 stars

So. What makes a good father? According to Noah Hawley's novel, it is feeling so guilty about not having a relationship with your son that it almost makes you crazy when the son does something that is despicable, and even though you don't know your son at all, you need to insist on his innocence. As if the son's innocence of a crime will prove that the father is innocent of a crime (in this case not really caring about a child) as well. This is kind of harsh. Let me start over.

Noah Hawley's nove...more So. What makes a good father? According to Noah Hawley's novel, it is feeling so guilty about not having a relationship with your son that it almost makes you crazy when the son does something that is despicable, and even though you don't know your son at all, you need to insist on his innocence. As if the son's innocence of a crime will prove that the father is innocent of a crime (in this case not really caring about a child) as well. This is kind of harsh. Let me start over.

Noah Hawley's novel, "The Good Father" is the dynamic between a father who moved across the country from his ex-wife and son and had a new family with new sons. This dynamic is stretched to the limit when the son is accused of killing a prominent senator who is more than likely to become the next president. The father is sickened because he feels like he has done something wrong by not being his father in the sense of seeing him more than 30 days a year. I don't know. When it comes down to it, even though it is proven throughout the novel that the father is not guilty, that the son had his own agenda and world views, it still feels as if this does not let the father off the hook, thus not making him a good father.

Wait.

*****PROBABLY SOME STATEMENTS IN THIS NEXT SECTION THAT COULD BE VIEWED AS SPOILERS. SKIP TO THE NEXT PARAGRAPH*****

Let me try to understand. Even though Daniel's family and Senator's family has the exact same structure, except that Daniel's is the oldest, and the Senator's oldest boy is dead so that Daniel sees the parallel between himself and the Senator's dead son, and even though Daniel's thoughts turn to murder after he meets the Senator and feels like he is a fraud. And he equates this fraudulent behavior to his father's behavior. And when he is killing the senator, he is in essence, killing his father, e.g. killing his ideal of having a loving leader in his life, someone who can be trusted and loyal, this is not the father's fault to some degree? I'm calling bullshit.

******NEXT PARAGRAPH*****

The first half of this novel really flies by, and I think some of the more interesting aspects of it is Noah Hawley's use of the other biographies of assassins to compare to this situation. I like the structure and the suspense. The last 100 pages or so start to really feel like that is nothing else for the narrator to hold onto, that all explanations are really moot, and that he is just banging his head against a wall. It is always tough for me to get through literary head banging. Finally in the end, "The Good Father" wraps itself nicely and gives the reader closure to the situation. (less)

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Apr 03, 2012 Gemma (Passion for Novels) rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book really gets you thinking about essentially what would make someone bad. The narrator of this story is the father of Daniel, he is accused of killing a Senator. The story is the fathers struggle to find out exactly what happened to Daniel in the months leading up to the shooting and actually whether he did it or not. Snippits of the novel are told in the third person in order for us to see exactly what Daniel was doing throughout these months as both himself as his alias Carter Allen Ca...more This book really gets you thinking about essentially what would make someone bad. The narrator of this story is the father of Daniel, he is accused of killing a Senator. The story is the fathers struggle to find out exactly what happened to Daniel in the months leading up to the shooting and actually whether he did it or not. Snippits of the novel are told in the third person in order for us to see exactly what Daniel was doing throughout these months as both himself as his alias Carter Allen Cash.

I really enjoyed this book and it is nothing like anything I have ever read before. It is more than anything about recognition of blame and acceptance. The character of Daniel is perhaps the hardest to decide whether you like his character or not, you know of the accusations of guilt before the book dives into his past. As a reader, listening to a father’s love of his son, I presumed from at the start that Daniel was innocent, I’m not sure whether this was because his father was trying to presume his innocence or as a reader you want a happy ending. In a way I think Hawley wants you to think this to start with and then takes you on a rollercoaster ride of is he? Or isn’t he? I changed my opinion multiple times throughout the novels events. Whether he is guilty or not? Well you’ll have to discover that for yourself.

I really enjoyed how Hawley used the assassinations of other people and explained them in great detail. Some of the minor ones I hadn’t really heard of and did find myself looking them up on the internet to check it wasn’t fictional. These bits intrigued me as to what the people’s lives were like before they assassinated someone, the father tries to map these men onto his son and see if there are any similar traits.

The narrator is clearly desperate, you see the pattern of his life become fixed upon his son. Each large chapter is entitled Home, Iowa, Carter Allen Cash and finally the epilogue Boy. These represent what is revealed to the reader in more detail. Boy is particular becomes the point of true realisation mirrored with the innocence of Boyhood. I really enjoyed the imagery in this book, towards the end Hawley focuses a lot on imagery of wolves, I remember one in particular that stuck in my mind as comparing an event to a mad uncle.

At the end I felt a little exhausted, but in a good way. I think Hawley has captured the emotions of ‘the Good Father’ perfectly so at the end I feel I felt as he would feel. It takes real skill to capture emotion to that capacity, is the end happy? Who knows really, its one of those books where you feel satisfied at its end rather than accumulating it to be happy or sad. It is the same feeling I get when I get to the end of a Picoult novel. This was a very hard book to write a review about to contextualise how it made me feel without revealing why it made me feel this way. So for the most part, you’ll just have to trust me J
Overall , well worth a read!
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Mar 30, 2012 Jessica at Book Sake rated it 2 of 5 stars

Book Review (ARC)
Do you know exactly how much I love the idea of a reputable doctor raising a psychopathic, cold-blooded murderer? The answer is – a lot, and I was really looking forward to reading this book. Unfortunately, the author executed this idea very poorly. Somewhere, within all the superfluous facts and details, there is an excellent story to be told, but this novel just seemed like a mess of loosely related thoughts – like ordering a pizza and the waiter telling you how cheese is made...more

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Mar 30, 2012 Diane rated it 4 of 5 stars

There are two books that published recently, Defending Jacob, by William Landay and The Good Father by Noah Hawley, that deal with fathers struggling with the accusation that their sons committed murder.

In Landay's novel, an assistant district attorney's teenage son is accused of killing his classmate. In The Good Father, Dr. Paul Allen's estranged college drop-out son is arrested for killing a senator, a popular family man on his way to winning his party's presidential nomination.

Allen divorced...more There are two books that published recently, Defending Jacob, by William Landay and The Good Father by Noah Hawley, that deal with fathers struggling with the accusation that their sons committed murder.

In Landay's novel, an assistant district attorney's teenage son is accused of killing his classmate. In The Good Father, Dr. Paul Allen's estranged college drop-out son is arrested for killing a senator, a popular family man on his way to winning his party's presidential nomination.

Allen divorced his son Danny's mother when Danny was a young boy. He left them and moved across the country to take another job. He remarried and began a new family, now father to twin boys. Danny spent time with his dad and his new family, summer vacations, but he was basically raised by his mother, a woman who was prone to "intense manic interest followed by long stretches of epic boredom", as Danny was.

Paul is shocked when he and his wife see on the news that Danny is the one arrested for killing the senator. He cannnot believe that his son did this; there must be a mistake. He hires a lawyer for his son, but his son will not cooperate. Danny is being held in federal custody and no one is allowed to see him.

Paul becomes obsessed with proving that his son is part of a conspiracy, a fall guy for the murder. He travels across the country, trying to piece together the last few years of his son's life; where he was, who he met, what he did.

This obsession endangers his marriage, and he and his new family are hounded so much, they move to a rural community in Colorado to escape and start over. His wife is patient, but she firmly tells him that if Danny will not cooperate, they must let him go and concentrate on saving their own two sons.

Hawley is a good writer, he really makes the reader empathetic to Paul's pain and anguish. He writes a great line, "Father and sons. What we wouldn't give to trade places with our boys, to absorb their suffering and ease their pain."

And yet here is my thought on that. Dr. Allen divorced Danny's mother because he couldn't take living with her anymore, that she may have suffered from depression. But he thought it was OK to leave his young son to be raised by her alone, while he starts a new life far away. Would it have been better for his son if he had his father around growing up? If he had made that sacrifice for his son, would things have turned out differently? I think that is something that Paul will have to live with for the rest of his life.

The Good Father haunts you with its sadness and despair, with a puzzling mystery thrown in. Did Danny kill the senator or was he a pawn in a conspiracy? It makes you uncomfortable, and gets you to think that you may not know your own child, the things he has gone through, what he is thinking. I do like that we get to see what Danny has gone through the past few years, and how he got to where he sadly ended up.
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Mar 26, 2012 Everyday eBook rated it 5 of 5 stars

Noah Hawley’s The Good Father: Risking It All to Save a Child

agine your child was accused of a heinous crime. How far would you go to find out the truth and protect him? At what point would you start blaming yourself? Noah Hawley’s latest psychological page-turner, The Good Father, examines this scenario and poses heartbreaking questions about parenting, love’s limits, and good versus evil. Told from the perspectives of both the determined, anguished father and his lost son, Hawley takes us deep...more

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Mar 22, 2012 Susan Tunis rated it 5 of 5 stars

Explaining the unexplainable

Dr. Paul Allen is a good man. As Noah Hawley’s novel opens, he is enjoying the family tradition of shouting out Jeopardy questions with his wife and twin sons. The game is interrupted by breaking news. The Democratic candidate—the presumed next President of the United States—has just been shot at a public rally. The coverage is chaotic, with reports and footage coming in from a variety of sources. Finally, some images of the shooter come up on the screen. It’s Daniel,...more Explaining the unexplainable

Dr. Paul Allen is a good man. As Noah Hawley’s novel opens, he is enjoying the family tradition of shouting out Jeopardy questions with his wife and twin sons. The game is interrupted by breaking news. The Democratic candidate—the presumed next President of the United States—has just been shot at a public rally. The coverage is chaotic, with reports and footage coming in from a variety of sources. Finally, some images of the shooter come up on the screen. It’s Daniel, Paul’s 20-year-old son from his first marriage. So begins a nightmare.

I think this premise alone is enough to intrigue most readers. We’ve experienced these atrocities, seen the breaking news coverage, hoped for the best. Who hasn’t spared just a moment to think of the people who love the perpetrators of these crimes? Just because your child turns out to be a monster, doesn’t mean you stop loving them.

Within moments, Secret Service agents have shown up at Dr. Allen’s door. He is taken in for questioning. They need to know everything about Daniel. He is shot, in custody, and branded as a terrorist. Paul is in shock and in denial. Yes, he’s seen the footage of his son with gun in hand, but he knows that Danny didn’t do it. As events unfold, Danny refuses to speak or defend himself, so it falls to his father. But Dr. Allen is a diagnostician, and even as he consistently proclaims his son’s innocence, he mentally searches for the trauma that broke him.

This novel is about the people on the periphery of a terrible act. It’s about the toll a child’s action takes not only on the parent, but on the entire family. The story is realistic, honest, and utterly compelling. Though flawed, Paul is a hugely sympathetic protagonist, even as he’s being reviled by the world. And while it is clear as day that this loving father is grasping at straws to save his child, at a certain point you have to wonder if these anomalies he finds don’t add up to something more ominous. And at that point, a wonderful family drama becomes significantly more suspenseful. These questions will have you turning pages until you finally get the entire story. Mr. Hawley does a superlative tying up all lose ends, whether plot-related or emotional.

This is a very contemporary story set in a realistic world most of us know all too well. The shootings of figures like Gabby Gifford, Ronald Reagan, and Robert Kennedy aren’t merely acknowledged, they’re dissected. Noah Hawley has tried to explain that which is essentially unexplainable. It’s extraordinary how well he succeeds. This novel works brilliantly on all levels. The writing is very strong without being unnecessarily showy. Each character, no matter how minor, is imbued with details that bring them to life. The human drama at the heart of this tale is both heart-breaking and healing. This is, in short, a flat-out fantastic novel. Read it!(less)

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Feb 22, 2012 Bonnie Brody added it

Paul Allen is a doctor, a rheumatologist who searches for the diagnoses of rare and often elusive diseases. He is married to Fran and they have two children, male fraternal twins around nine years old. He had been married before to a woman named Ellen. Their marriage lasted only a short while and together they had a child named Danny. Paul left Ellen when Danny was seven years old and moved from the east coast to Los Angeles. He saw Danny at Christmas and in the summers. One evening when Paul an...more Paul Allen is a doctor, a rheumatologist who searches for the diagnoses of rare and often elusive diseases. He is married to Fran and they have two children, male fraternal twins around nine years old. He had been married before to a woman named Ellen. Their marriage lasted only a short while and together they had a child named Danny. Paul left Ellen when Danny was seven years old and moved from the east coast to Los Angeles. He saw Danny at Christmas and in the summers. One evening when Paul and Fran are watching television they see a picture of Danny on a news broadcast. He is accused of killing Senator Jay Seagram, the democratic hopeful for the next presidential election - think JFK. Seagram is young and vibrant and a true alternative to the Washington driven old boys' network. "This is how it happens. There is nothing and then, suddenly, something. A family is making dinner, talking, laughing, and then the outside world muscles in."

The novel goes into Danny's history. He had recently dropped out of Vassar College and is traveling around the country, not staying in any one place too long. Like a hobo, he gets dead-end jobs and moves along to the next city quickly. Paul is obsessed with Danny's innocence, not believing him capable of having committed such a horrendous crime. Even if he did commit the crime, Paul is determined to find out why. Was is because of his fathering, or lack therof? Were there signs in Danny during his childhood that he missed that might have led to his having murdered a man? Paul jeopardizes the family he has to try and understand Danny, living his life as a detective, trying to cipher what he missed in Danny that led him to buying guns and shooting someone. He finds out that Danny has changed his name to Carter Allen Cash as he traveled the country. Was there a reason for this?

Paul goes from being a respected doctor and head of his department in a teaching hospital to being viewed as a pariah. "I looked at their faces. I could see it in their eyes. They all thought he had done it. He was a monster, and I, as his father, was at best a sad, pathetic man, and at worst a parent guilty of almost criminal negligence. Monsters don't just become monsters, after all. They are forged in a laboratory of abuse a neglect. And who else is to blame but the parents?" Paul thinks about everything he can remember of Danny's childhood - his lack of follow-through, his impulsivity, the impact of the divorce on him, his lack of a large network of friends. None of these symptoms seem severe enough to account for the murder. His first wife, Ellen, was ditzy and somewhat of a hippy but she loved Danny and did the best she could. Paul himself saw Danny relatively infrequently and they were never very close. He blames himself for not devoting more time to Danny and not having fathered him in a more qualitative manner.

The murder causes terrible stress to Paul's marriage and family. "Overnight we became public figures." He was determined not to turn his family into a circus. News reporters hovered all over the place seeking interviews or snapshots. It became so bad that Fran took the twins out of school and home schooled them.

Paul has all sorts of theories about the crime - there was another gunman, there was a conspiracy, Danny was duped into committing the murder. He realized that "an attack on a presidential candidate was an attack on democracy itself. Elections are about hope, the Secret Service agent had told me. And my son was accused of murdering hope. The hope of his country, of the world." Danny's fingerprints are on the murder weapon, he has declared himself guilty and there are pictures of him firing the gun. Still, Paul wants to believe in his son's innocence or lack of responsibility for the crime. He goes to great lengths to try and prove that Danny did not commit the murder. The sentence for this crime is death and Danny is scheduled to die by lethal injection.

The book traces Danny's footsteps from the day that he dropped out of Vassar and began traveling the country. There are chapters about other murderers and what led to their crimes - John Hinckley, Timothy McVeigh, Charles Whitman. The book also examines criminals such as Charles Manson, Gary Gilmore, and Lynette 'Squeaky' Fromme. The novel's timeframe is from the time that Danny is 19 and drops out of college after one semester until he is 26 years old and shoots Senator Seagram.

What is so exceptional about this novel is the way it explores the inner life of Danny's father, Paul, and the despair he is experiencing along with his complete bewilderment about why his son would have done something as horrific as murdering Senator Seagram. "I had spend the last three months trying to compile the evidence, to add up all the moments from Danny's childhood that could provide a diagnosis, a definitive answer as to who he was and why he did the things he did, and yet in life everything is open to interpretation. We see the past through the prism of our perception. When a man is indicted of a crime you review his life looking for patterns. Incidents that may have been meaningless before suddenly loom large." "I have looked into my son's eyes throughout the course of his life and never once have I seen a freak, a sociopath, or a murderer." Paul believes the answer to his questions lie in Danny's time wandering the country but he never stops questioning himself about his own role as a father.

This book is page-turner as well as being a book of depth. It is extraordinarily well-written as it examines the inner life and actions of a father who can not bear to lose his son but in the process of trying to save his son may lose everything else in life that he holds dear. It is a book of moral and ethical ambiguity, a story of a man lost and most likely seriously mentally ill, of a father who wears his guilt on his sleeve and can no longer sleep. Paul goes through the steps of his life in a rote manner but his passion for life is no longer there. I highly recommend this book and look forward to more books by this author.
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Feb 12, 2012 Alisha rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: amazon-vine, contemporary-fiction, tearjerkers

I've mentioned before that when it comes to senseless acts of violence, the family of the accused are the people that I tend to forget about. Of course, you remember the victims and due to that, you remember the perpetrator, but the perpetrator's family is almost never thought about and when they are it's mostly to vilify them for bringing a monster into the world. Sometimes, I feel like the perpetrators' families are also victims (unless, of course, they had something to do with the crimes and/...more I've mentioned before that when it comes to senseless acts of violence, the family of the accused are the people that I tend to forget about. Of course, you remember the victims and due to that, you remember the perpetrator, but the perpetrator's family is almost never thought about and when they are it's mostly to vilify them for bringing a monster into the world. Sometimes, I feel like the perpetrators' families are also victims (unless, of course, they had something to do with the crimes and/or hid them and didn't do anything to stop them).

The Good Father raises an interesting question in what makes a good parent. If it was your child who had committed a deplorable act, would you stand by them? If you had unshakeable proof that they had indeed committed this act, would you keep searching for answers that would exonerate them? Would you do it to the extent of ignoring your present family? This is what Dr. Paul Allen was doing when his son was committed of murdering a presidential candidate. The lengths he goes through to try to save his son are admirable. But then again, does that make him a good father? It's easy to read about his (fictional) situation and think "He really should just stop and deal with the reality of what happened instead of wasting time and money in a fruitless search", but if it was your own kid, I think most people would go through the same lengths that Dr. Paul Allen did.

Besides the interesting questions that The Good Father seemed to raise, I liked the way that Hawley got into the Dr. Allen's head. You could feel his inner turmoil and his guilt for the act that Danny committed. Hawley also did a tremendous job in getting into Danny's head. It was intriguing (and frightening) to see the transformation from Danny (young man who was just trying to find himself) to Carter Allen Cash (sick young man who murdered a presidential candidate and therefore destroyed some of America's collected hope). It was so disturbing to see how some miniscule moments (to those who didn't experience them) can change someone and just screw with their whole life. This was even more obvious with the included true-crime tidbits of other young men who committed deplorable acts.

I found The Good Father to be an emotionally-wrenching and disturbing read. I think it gives a fairly good insight into what must be going through the minds of the perpetrators' families and it is an eye-opener in every sense of the word.(less)

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Dec 04, 2011 Jane rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: first-reads

Whenever I hear a story of senseless killing, my first thought is always for the victims. But the thought that follows close behind is a thought about the parents. Not just the parent of the victims but also the parent of the killer especially if it’s a young person. I always wonder how I would react. Would I go over every detail of my child’s life to figure out how that child had come to such a bad place? For this reason, this book really spoke to my heart. The father in this book does exactly...more

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Oct 09, 2011 Virginia rated it 5 of 5 stars

I received this book through Goodreads' First Reads and put it on my windowsill until I had a plane trip that would give me both uninterrupted time and no other book at-hand to substitute if it turned out to be emotionally difficult. I'm glad I waited.

I rated the book 5 stars for the way it built and tackled a subject that really makes most of us flinch. Can divorce cause our kids to go bad? Does quality time substitute for quantity of time? Can we be weekend or summer parents and still do a go...more

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Feb 03, 2012 Denise rated it 4 of 5 stars

Solid 4.0 out of 5 stars - not "nature vs nurture" but WHAT MAKES A GOOD FATHER?

This book reminded me of We Need to Talk About Kevin because it was about the anguish experienced by a parent when a child does something inexplicably heinous. Although in the former, the child, Kevin, had something obviously wrong with him from the beginning -- with Daniel Allen (or Carter Allen Cash), it was more insidious.

Dr. Paul Allen has a happy life. He's remarried to Fran and they have twin 10-year-old sons w...more

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