The Son of a Certain Woman

by Wayne Johnston

Here comes Percy Joyce.
 
From one of Canada’s most acclaimed, beloved storytellers: The Son of a Certain Woman is Wayne Johnston’s funniest, sexiest novel yet, controversial in its issues, wise, generous and then some in its depiction of humanity.
 
Percy Joyce, born in St. John’s, Newfoundland, in the fifties is an outsider from childhood, set apart by a congenital disfigurement. Taunted and bullied, he is also isolated by his intelligence and wit, and his unique circumstances: an unbaptized boy raised by a single mother in a fiercely Catholic society. Soon on the cusp of teenagehood, Percy is filled with yearning, wild with hormones, and longing for what he can’t have—wanting to be let in...and let out. At the top of his wish list is his disturbingly alluring mother, Penelope, whose sex appeal fairly leaps off the page. Everyone in St. John’s lusts after her—including her sister-in-law, Medina; their paying boarder, the local chemistry teacher, Pops MacDougal; and...Percy.
 
Percy, Penelope, and Pops live in the Mount, home of the city’s Catholic schools and most of its clerics, none of whom are overly fond of the scandalous Joyces despite the seemingly benign protection of the Archbishop of Newfoundland himself, whose chief goal is to bring “little Percy Joyce” into the bosom of the Church by whatever means necessary. In pursuit of that goal, Brother McHugh, head of Percy’s school, sets out to uncover the truth behind what he senses to be the complicated relationships of the Joyce household. And indeed there are dark secrets to be kept hidden: Pops is in love with Penelope, but Penelope and Medina are also in love—an illegal relationship: if caught, they will be sent to the Mental, and Percy, already an outcast of society, will be left without a family.
 
The Son of a Certain Woman brilliantly mixes sorrow and laughter as it builds toward an unforgettable ending. Will Pops marry Penelope? Will Penelope and Medina be found out? Will Percy be lured into the Church? It is a reminder of the pain of being an outsider; of the sustaining power of love and the destructive power of hate; and of the human will to triumph.

Genres: Fiction, Canada, Historical Fiction, Contemporary, Novels, Coming Of Age, Literary Fiction

448 pages, Hardcover

First published September 17, 2013

About the author

Wayne Johnston was born and raised in Goulds, Newfoundland. After a brief stint in pre-Med, Wayne obtained a BA in English from Memorial University. He worked as a reporter for the St. John's Daily News before deciding to devote himself full-time to writing.

En route to being published, Wayne earned an MA in Creative Writing from the University of New Brunswick. Then he got off to a quick start. His first book, The Story of Bobby O'Malley, published when he was 27 years old, won the WH Smith/Books in Canada First Novel award for the best first novel published in the English language in Canada in that year. The Divine Ryans was adapted to a film, for which Wayne wrote the screenplay. Baltimore's Mansion, a memoire dealing with his grandfather, his father and Wayne himself, won the Charles Taylor Prize. Both The Colony of Unrequited Dreams and The Navigator of New York were on bestseller lists in Canada and have been published in the US, Britain, Germany, Holland, China and Spain. Colony was identified by the Globe and Mail newspaper as one of the 100 most important Canadian books ever produced.

Reviews

[Trudi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Deciding to tell a story about a physically disfigured child who lusts after his biological mother while living out their lives in the long, judgmental, crucifying shadow of the Catholic Church in 1950's St. John's Newfoundland ... is ... curious at best. But also weird and ... questionable.

I'm not sure what kind of a book Johnston thought he was writing. At first it seems humorous and whimsical, a slice of Frank McCourt meets a heaping portion of John Irving. There's poverty, a dysfunctional family, religion, sexual awakening, and some odd occurrences that make you laugh just for their very oddness and inappropriateness.

But as the book progresses, the oddities start to fall flat onto the very shoulders of uninteresting and boring. If Son of a Certain Woman is meant to be Johnston's indictment of the corrupt and nasty hold the Catholic Church at one time held over the historic and capital city of St. John's it really doesn't succeed, neither as a parable, or tongue-in-cheek satire (if that's what you're looking for, get Codco on DVD).

Where it really fails is as a meaningful and emotional coming-of-age story. I didn't fall in love with anybody and did not feel as if there were any stakes worth cheering for. Despite Percy's precociousness and precarious place in the world, I could not open my mind wide enough to hope that his gob-smackingly, sensual mother finally lays him.

My disappointment here is heartfelt. I love Johnston's writing and his unerring ability to capture the layered realities and eccentricities of my home and my people. I did enjoy some of his descriptions of the 1950's streets of St. John's, but sometimes, in an effort to paint that portrait, the brush strokes felt a little heavy-handed and clumsy, like a travel book or described video.

While it pains me to do it, I am recommending a pass on this one.


A copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.

[Esil · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was very excited to win this book from Goodreads. I loved The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, which is the only other book by Johnston I have read, and was really looking forward to getting immersed in this book. It`s hard to say that I loved The Son of a Certain Woman. I feel like it purposefully pushes pretty hard on the reader`s comfort level. In that sense, it is well done. It also does a good job of creating a set of unusual characters, trying to survive in what on the surface only is meant to be a conventional world. So it`s not a comfortable read, but it is certainly interesting and engaging and at times quite funny. It has also reminded me to read some of Johnson`s earlier books which I had not yet read.

[Paula Dembeck · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have read several of Johnson’s novels and enjoyed them all, so when I picked up this book I was ready to settle into another good read. It was not what I expected and I almost dismissed it entirely when I checked out its content which proved to be controversial. I was not sure I wanted to spend time reading about a boy who longed to sleep with his mother. But my past experience with Johnson’s writing was so positive I decided to give it a try. Although I found some of it creepy, the book has so much to say about other things, I am glad I did not dismiss it because of its lusty protagonist’s lifelong goal of bedding his mother (worded in much more crude terms in the boy’s long monologue-like passages).

The story is set in the late fifties and early sixties in downtown St. John’s Newfoundland. Percy Joyce was born with port wine stains covering most of his face and has a rare syndrome that gave him oversized hands and feet and a fat drooping lower lip. He is the only son of Penelope (Penny) Joyce, a beautiful single mother abandoned by her fiancé Jim Joyce when she was just two months pregnant. She still wears her engagement ring to ward off potential suitors, those who know her and those who would like to. She is so beautiful every man who looks at her lusts after her and dreams of bedding her. Motorists who see Penny and Percy on the street, honk their horns, roll down their windows and whistle or shout, ogling Penny and gaping at Percy.

Penny and Percy live at 44 Bonaventure Street in the Catholic area of St John’s known as the Mount. Penny inherited the house from her mother but the mortgage payments are currently more than the purchase price because her mother was in arears on her payments. Penny does freelance typing and lets out one of her rooms to make the payments. Jerome MacDougal is her boarder, a fortyish man from St Anthony’s affectionately called “Pops”. He is the chemistry teacher and Vice Principal at Brother Rice, the Catholic school across the street. Medina, Jim Joyce's sister, is Penny's best friend and a frequent visitor to her house. She has a low paying part time job as an orderly at St. Clare’s the local hospital. She dropped out of school in Grade three and can neither read nor write. Penny on the other hand got as far as grade ten, is self-educated and very intelligent, a woman who has read many books and makes a habit of reading to her son. By the time Percy was five, it was obvious he was as intelligent. He could read, knew the multiplication tables, could do long division and identify every country on a map.

Penny, Medina and Pops are all agnostics who were born Catholic. Medina goes to church to keep up appearances because she works at a Catholic hospital and Pops goes because it is required of anyone who works at the high school. Penny refuses to set her foot through their doors.

There are a number of tangled relationships within the four walls of the house. Pops is paying a larger part of the mortgage to enjoy a monthly bedtime visit from Penny, while Medina is Penny’s real lover. Penelope and Medina live in fear their relationship will be discovered and that they will be condemned by the Church and sent to the “Mental” while Pops clandestine relationship with Penny could cost him his job if it ever became known. Before Percy came to know what was going on in the complicated mix of sexual relationships that surround him, his greatest hope was to one day sleep with his mother. The house on Bonaventure is one full of secrets, a small enclosed space waiting to implode.

Percy was born with False Someone’s Syndrome and his future looks bleak. His unusual features scare people and cause them to stare. Some thought the stain on his face meant he was mentally retarded, others saw his outsized hands and feet and thought he was a dwarf. Children taunt and torment him and he has no friends. Penny is determined to protect him as much as she can from the small minded people in town and delays his entry into school until he is six.

Percy’s birth on June 24th, the feast day of John the Baptist, made him special for Archbishop Scanlon who had convinced himself that Percy was on earth for some divine purpose. The man, comically referred to later in the narrative as Uncle Paddy, takes Percy under his wing when he is only four years old and gives him protection through a sermon he preaches at the grand Basilica about how to treat others. And then weeks before Percy was to start school, the archbishop announced that Percy was to be except from any and all forms of physical punishment. It soon became known in all the schools on the Mount that to say an unkind word to Percy would earn them the wrath of the church, whether it was on or off school grounds.

Many in the city find the Archbishop’s concern for Penny and Percy troublesome as Penny is not only a lapsed Catholic, but an unmarried woman with a bastard son who has never been baptized. Among them is Brother McHugh, Pops’ boss, Principal of the School and Director of all the other city schools on the Mount. He must follow the Archbishop’s edicts but finds Percy a troublemaker and a liar, a boy who spins tall tales to attract the attention of his school mates and distract from his disfigurement. Percy has adopted this method of myth making to draw other children to him, to give him some power over them. He found he could do this by saying things they would not normally know. He made up lies, tales and fantasies and soon found that the more outrageous they were, the more attention he received. Words became his weapons. It was better than being ignored.

McHugh is a sly, slippery, underhanded man who knows what goes on under the roof at 44 Bonaventure, the home he spies on using binoculars, taking advantage of the spacious view he has into their home from his own window, his peeping perch. He is often up wandering around his residential suite at night, taking advantage of the view and thinking about what goes on in that house after dark. He has made it his personal mission to bring them all down and has many ways he can apply pressure despite the protection they enjoy from the Archbishop.

After a particular ugly incident, Penny publicly slaps a student and accuses McHugh of beating another. Battle lines have been drawn. McHugh confronts Percy, demanding he abandon the notion he is special and informing him he will no longer be his guardian angel. He calls Percy a spoiled coddled Mamma’s boy and a prideful misfit. He also suggests he knows there is something unusual going on at Percy’s home which is tied to their present living arrangements. And he drops hints about the nature of their secrets, noting that although Penny has a problem child, she appears to be cheerful and happy. And he shows Percy that he knows how to hurt boys in ways that leave no marks.

The novel focuses on three prominent themes: Percy’s attempts to deal with his disfigurement, the bullying that accompanies it and his search for a happy future; his mother’s attempts to protect him from the hurtful actions of others, her open hostility to the oppressive sadistic Catholic Church that can make or break her and finally the sexual tension created by the living arrangements at the house.

Despite these heavy themes the narrative is full of comedy as Percy tries to do whatever he can to gain friendships and live a normal life. His hilarious blasphemous monologues are playful sarcastic bits of theater. Johnson lives up to his past success as a master of character, drawing portraits of the players who gain our sympathy, earn our disdain and horror as the story evolves and they show their true colors. The narrative is especially good when it gets into Percy’s head, as he thinks about himself, his future and the motley crew he considers to be his family. He is lonely and unhappy and wonders if he will ever have a girlfriend or know what it is like to kiss someone or be kissed. He asks himself if he must settle for just enduring life, after all, he has every right to be on this earth, just like everyone else. He thinks about others in the city, those who limp, have speech impediments, are missing a hand or have a low IQ. They have a life and he wants one too. He never takes the other path wondering how things would have turned out if he were not so different. That kind of thinking makes no sense and besides, merely surviving tasks him to his limit.

Johnson paints a scathing picture of the Catholic Church with its obscene wealth, its ornate symbols and its sadistic Brothers and nuns who were abusive teachers. His narrative shows how its terrible power affected everyone but especially those who antagonized them. Religion was so powerful at that time, it determined people's relationships and their behavior, a destructive force meant to deliver compassion, safety and security but had become twisted over the years by its silent and overt power.

Some have found the book unnecessarily long, its length powered by the many soliloquies that spout from Penny and Percy’s witty but potty mouths. I however found these pieces outrageously funny, especially Penny’s acid tongued criticisms of church doctrine which uses simple logic to questions the long held fantasies that had become the tenets of an all knowing church.

In many ways this is an outrageous story, but it harbours many truths. It reminds readers how the Church’s sadistic minions meted out its wrath; how outside appearances can hide startling intelligence and how looks whether that of Penny’s beauty or Percy’s disfigurement, can lead one to be an outsider with all the emotional pain that accompanies it. It also shows the destructive power of hate in all its guises.

Percy is the narrator and is funny, but his constant fixation on sex can be tiresome. Although clearly others did not find that a problem evidenced by the fact it was short listed for the Stephen Leacock award in 2014 and longlisted for the Giller Prize in 2013. For those who have not yet read any of Johnson’s work I would not recommended this book as a starting point. I found his other work to be much more satisfying and suggest they try any of his other novels such as The Divine Ryans, The Navigator of New York, The Custodian of Paradise or Baltimore Mansions first.

[Ruth Seeley · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love Wayne Johnston's historical fiction, whether it's his tales of Newfoundland or of Brooklyn. When I was reading this one, I tweeted that I was enjoying it (I was at about the one-third point then), and @JanetSomerville tweeted back that it was 'Irving-esque.' That can be a good thing - and a bad thing, as Irving's work is very uneven (I realize I cannot get back the time I spent reading Son of the Circus, the book I've heard was published with a no-editing clause). I assume Janet was referring to better Irvings, like A Prayer for Owen Meany or Cider House Rules.

Once again, I'm never sure how much my mood affects what I'm reading, so perhaps I would have liked this one better if I'd read it at a different time. Both Percy Joyce and his mother, Penelope, are 'different' at a time and in a place where religious, sexual and social conformity are prized (St. John's in the 1950s and early 1960s - although that was true throughout North America). Percy is born out of wedlock (sorry to use that phrase, but trust me, that was the condemnatory phrase that was used for at least the first 20 years of my life - Percy and I are contemporaries) with serious physical issues, a syndrome that means his face is covered with a huge 'strawberry' birthmark and grotesquely oversized hands and feet. The local Archbishop takes Percy under his wing to ensure he isn't bullied or beaten up at school, and also decrees that corporal punishment (standard at the time, we've all heard the tales of strapping and stropping and caning by headmasters both in the UK and in religious and public schools in Canada) is not appropriate for Percy no matter how he misbehaves. He also helps Penelope by giving her Archdiocese work she can do at home.

But this novel just didn't work for me, I'm afraid, and the problem lies not in the writing but in the believability of the characters. Why would a very attractive woman who's an avid reader be attracted to an illiterate character who is not particularly attractive? And why would that attraction persist for more than 20 years? For me this is reminiscent of Germaine Greer saying at one point that educated women should date blue collar men. Opposites may well attract but I'm not so sure they're the basis for many long-term relationships, and those we choose in adolescence are rarely those we'd choose in our 40s. Is it believable that a woman like Penelope would react to being forced to conform by flouting society's conventions even more, in private? Like the Quill and Quire reviewer, there were portions of this novel I found tedious, and I struggled to finish it.

Spoiler alert in this linked review: http://www.quillandquire.com/reviews/...

[Barbara Sibbald · Rating 2 out of 5]

Percy Joyce. What a lad! Smart, disfigured and precocious - especially sexually. Okay, I get it, he lusts after his mother, the luscious Penelope, do you have to give me the blow-by-blow, hard-on by hard-on? Frankly, the repetition was dull. This book would have been a lot more poignant with about a hundred fewer pages. It's told from Percy's point of view and oft-times the observations were too astute for the age -- even for someone who is bright. Despite this, there are some moments of genuine hilarity in this book. Particularly the grand finale! And I certainly can't object to the broad swipe at Catholicism for all its foibles.

[Paula · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was my first exposure to Johnston's body of work. The setting is 1950's St.John's Newfoundland in a catholic neighbourhood. Pretty much everything in the storyline is in direct conflict with the catholic churches' teaching. I found the story witty and irreverent at first but as I got closer and closer to the end I found myself feeling more and more uncomfortable with where the story was going. I am not a prude but I thought the sexual content went too far - I don't think it was necessary to make the author's point.

[LibraryCin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Percy was born with FSS (Famous Someone Syndrome), where his hands, feet, and lips are all oversized; he also has an extremely large wine-red/purple “stain” on his face. He lives in St. John’s, Nfld with his beautiful single mom and her boarder, who also teaches at Percy’s school. A frequent visitor to their house is his mom’s friend, Medina. He also realizes there will never be a girl/woman who will love him or have sex with him; he figures his only hope is his mother. The story follows Percy from about 5 years old to 15.

Ok, as distasteful as that is, the story itself wasn’t bad. Initially, it reminded me of John Irving. It was pretty slow, though. It did pick up for me as I continued on, so I temporarily thought I might rate is just a bit higher, until something at the end of the book brought my rating back down to “ok”. It was apparently set in the 1950s and 60s, but I don’t recall if that was explicitly stated in the book. There was some humour and plenty of criticism of the Catholic Church.

[Krista · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most of the people who knew my mother either slept with her or wished they had, including me, my aunt Medina and a man who boarded with us…As for me wanting to sleep with my mother, if you disapprove, try spending your childhood with a face that looks long past its prime, with hands and feet like the paws of some prehuman that foraged on all fours -- and then get back to me. Or better yet, read on.

This opening salvo appropriately prepares the reader for what is to come: Anyone who might be offended by incest or lesbians or rationalised prostitution should close the covers and back away. As someone who is not offended by a literary treatment of incest (and not in the least offended by lesbians and prostitutes), I was prepared to accept whatever came along after such an intriguing start -- and I was left rather disappointed.

Percy Joyce, eponymously The Son of a Certain Woman, was born with a benign form of a congenital defect (playfully referred to throughout the book as False Someone Syndrome, or FSS) that left him with a port-stained face, large and drooping lower lip, and oversized hands and feet; making him the subject of ridicule and cruelty from everyone outside his family; a situation that intensifies when he starts school. His only advantage (beyond the unfailing love of his mother and aunt) is the attention of the Archbishop of Newfoundland who, because he believes it auspicious that Percy was born on the Feast Day of John the Baptist -- Patron Saint of St. John's -- delivers a sermon that warns the boy is under his personal protection; sparing Percy not only the physical bullying of his peers but also the corporal punishment of his school teachers (making him the only child in all of Newfoundland not beat to shreds by the sadistic nuns and Christian Brothers charged with their education). Nothing, however, can prevent the other children from shunning Percy, or testing the limits of the Archbishop's protection with name-calling and vulgar taunts, and the loneliness that the boy feels was the most honest part of this book for me.

Apparently, Wayne Johnston's goal was to do for St. John's what James Joyce's Ulysses did for Dublin, and although I've yet to read Ulysses, I don't know if he has succeeded with The Son of a Certain Woman. (But hey, nudge, nudge, the abandoned Mom is named Penelope and the missing Dad is Jim Joyce -- get it? Nudge?) Johnston captures a time and place, and especially the stranglehold that the Catholic Church had over that time and place, but he only shows us one small street and only the part of that small street that leads from Percy's home to his school -- hardly an odyssey of epic proportions. Not only is this street tread over and over, but the same things happen over and over: for a 400+ page book, it felt like very little happened -- Percy gets teased or tries to get attention with one of his "give me myth or give me death" lies; his mother overreacts; the church has a response. And while this book is considered humorous, it's more farce than anything else, and I don't know that James Joyce by way of John Irving was what I was expecting.

As the book drew to a close and the machinations of the Archbishop were finally revealed, I had hopes that the payoff would be worth the journey, but the ending scene undermined whatever claim to seriousness that The Son of a Certain Woman may have been preparing. I was left cold.

What I did like was the portrayal of the Catholic Church's absolute power over its adherents at the time (even if it may have gone over the top with the sadism of the teachers -- but who knows, maybe that was Johnston's experience -- my mother doesn't have a lot of nice things to say about the nuns who taught her). And I felt compassion for Penny and Medina -- I can't imagine a time when two consenting adults lived in fear of being "hauled off to the Mental" for acting on the love that dare not speak its name. By now I know that Johnston didn't win the Giller Prize for this novel, and based on the few books on the shortlist that I have read, that seems appropriate.

[David Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I needed this book. Wayne Johnston - your way with words is a breath of fresh air. I laughed, I cried, I felt relief as I folowed the wonderful relationship between Percy and his mother, and especially enjoyed their ability to outwit the evil, violent and mendacious efforts of the Catholics to destroy their lives. Bravo. I feel well-prepared to tackle The Mystery of Right and Wrong. Bottom line: If Wayne Johnston wrote it - read it.

[Connie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely hilarious! Witty, sassy,irreverent, and downright scandalous! Canadian humour at it's finest!

[Manuela · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is definitely one of my favourites. The author is definitely a storyteller! The way he describes St John, makes you actually want to go there.

[David]

It didn’t work for me. I tried this second reading to see if I was mistaken about the first. No. It is, in short, a 400+ page set-up for a juvenile dirty joke, aggrandized in a self-inflating literary allusion. No, this is not Ulysses, nor was meant to be. Both Percy (Janes) and (James) Joyce should feel more than a little insulted. Johnston is recycling. He covers no ground here that he did not do better, and with less vulgarity, than he did in The Divine Ryans. Penelope Joyce is far beneath Linda (Ryan) Delaney in foundational dignity. Percy Joyce lacks most of Draper Doyle Ryan’s naive Charm. Brother McHugh makes Father Seymour Ryan look like a novice: McHugh is beyond Nazi. Aunt Medina, though pleasant, is no substitute for Uncle Reg Ryan. At least she is not Aunt Philomena; that function is spread among many characters, most notably “Pops.” The whole novel seems like a vulgar exercise in Catholic bashing; one can only hope Johnston is exaggerating, otherwise the tailback of disappointed sinners at the Pearly Gates is going to be immensely long. It is not at all “sexy” as some reviews have called it, and, though it has Johnston’s usual humour, it isn’t really that funny either.

[Carolyn Walsh · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read this book when it was first published in 2013, wrote a review and posted it. Just learned the book is somehow missing from my shelves. Wayne Johnston is a highly admired Newfoundland writer of literary historic novels. This one was different, and the sexual and religious subject matter made me uncomfortable. I remember in my original review I stated that I thought I had just read a bad, crude Newfoundland joke.

[Candice Walsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually enjoyed this book and I'm surprised by all its negative reviews. It's certainly not my favourite Johnston book (I'm a fan girl), but it kept me interested throughout. Minus all the religious bits. I have a weird love for coming of age stories, though. And that ending? Hilarious.

[Lauren Hopkins · Rating 1 out of 5]

A woman's life is ruined by every man she ever meets and it's made out to be her fault somehow.

[Ava · Rating 4 out of 5]

Would’ve been 4 stars for great writing and immersiveness had there not been such a sexual mindset and incest plot…

Expanded Review:

After letting what I've read sit for a few days, I can actually talk about it now.

First of all: This is a piece of literature.
Literature is flexible and can cover many topics and perspectives.
So here is my proper review for 'The Son of a Certain Woman."

St Johns in the 50s/60s does not come off as a fun place to live. And considering that his is the settings of Johnston's childhood makes me think he would know what he's talking about.
Nonetheless, this story covers the childhood to early adolescence of Percy Joyce's life, the 3 big factors being the deformity of his face, hands and feet, the prevalent religion and its prejudice, and Percy's highly unconventional family. Let's start there.

Penelope Joyce, Percy Joyce, Jerome "Pops" MacDougal, and Medina Joyce.
Or
Penny, Percy, Pops, and Medina.

Penny, Percy's agnostic, beautiful and because of these reasons, socially rejected mother is in love with Medina.

Medina, the sister of Percy's biological father who supposedly ran off when Penny was pregnant, is in love with Penny.

Pops, the Joyce's alcoholic chemistry teacher boarder who never takes off his lab coat, is in love with Penny.

Percy, the biological child son of Penny, fatherless, virtually friendless and deformed, is ALSO in love with Penny.
His mother.

During this time in St Johns, religion is extremely important. The Brothers are after you to obey the bible, the Archbishop, who happens to think Percy is a gift from God, is after you to obey the bible and have everyone be good god-fearing citizens.
Naturally, Percy's family do not fit in well with these moulds for society.
Percy, unbaptized, deformed, and birthed from a 'certain woman' out of wedlock and without a father, is certainly not accepted .
Penny, a beautiful, agnostic woman of loose morals and loose other things is condemned almost as much as she is lusted for.
Pops, another agnostic, spends his time in his room in the Joyce's house, the only passion in his life his science and the idea that maybe, someday, hopefully, Penny will grow desparate enough to marry him (spoiler alert, she does).
Medina, unwed, uneducated, living in a single room in a dingey place in the city is in love with a woman (highly forbidden) and constantly feels not good enough.

Basically, you would hate to live the lives of any of these people.
Don't think that there's a silver lining to their lives, because there's not. Their family situation is messed up enough. They have each other, but they're also more alone than any group of characters I've ever come across.

In the novel, Percy grasps with his unfortuante circumstances of life by telling outlandish lies (he calls them myths hence the used phrase: Give Me Myth or Give Me Death). These myths get him some attention but also get him into trouble which ultimately helps the Church manipulate the Joyces into having him baptized, and under threat of Pops losing his job and the evil principal/Brother finding proof that Penny and Medina are 'crazy lizzies' (Johnston's words, not mine—or perhaps society's words would be a better relation) Pops and Penny are forced to be married.

Here's another spoiler. You know how 3/4s of the family are in love with Penny? Well, they all sleep with her too.
Pops pays her money and is desparate.
Medina is the one she's actually in a relationship.
And after years of Percy lusting for his mother she, towards the end, agrees to start sleeping with him on the down low. If you had to read the chapter where she agrees this, you would feel sick. Having to read her dialogue telling Percy they wouldn't call it "incest" or "Pity-fucking". Penny was a questionable character to begin with, but I didn't actually think she would go through with it.

Anywho, that kind of bridges into the second problem I had with this novel, which was the very sexual mindset that Percy had, even as a young child. He was constantly getting a hard-on by seeing the legs of school girls, the strain of his mother's bust in her blouses, and, god help us all, the time he spotted his mother and aunt having sex. It's just a bit much, and as one review stated that I feel summarizes the whole sex/incest plotlines is that it pushes on the comfort level of the reader.
Yeah. For sure.

All this being said... was it a good book?

My answer is yes.

It may be uncomfortable, unconventional and a bit disturbing, but I feel Johnston's storytelling capabilities are awesome. He told the story in a descriptive and immersive nature that I found very compelling (not so much during the sexual parts, but you get what I mean). I felt the pressure of the Church in 1950s NL, and I felt for Percy as he struggled through life.
It really painted a picture of the cruelties of life, feeling trapped, discriminated, and how people deal with these circumstances.
The characters were unique, and the story went along with that.

Provided that the incest focus was not some sort of guilty pleasure on Johnston's part, then I would give this book four stars.

[Elen Ghulam · Rating 3 out of 5]

The novel is repetitive and belabored. Could have easily been 100 pages shorter and achieved the same effect.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was the second of Wayne Johnston's novels I've read - the first (some years ago) was 'The Navigator of New York' which I remember plodding through and finding rather dull, so it often surprises me when I read that Johnston is known for his humour and satire. 'The Son of a Certain Woman' couldn't have been more different to that other book (or at least my memory of it) and for the first 100 pages or so I loved it - so big-hearted and genuinely funny. But its central concept of the disfigured son who lusts after his beautiful mother for me eventually became the novel's undoing and I found the last couple of hundred pages not only increasingly disturbing, but also disappointing as the novel never really goes anywhere, and the final scene where Percy's thoughts of his mother during his baptism bring on a state of “religious” ecstasy? Preposterous, and if it had occurred earlier in the book I may have abandoned it. “Here comes Percy Joyce” indeed…

Whilst reading this I kept thinking of one of my favourite novels of a couple of years ago: Anne Peile’s ‘Repeat it Today with Tears’ which dealt with a girl tracking down her absent father and deliberately beginning an affair with him – that too could have been sensationalist and tawdry but Peile handled it with such sensitivity and made the characters so believable that as a reader I ended up almost rooting for them. Mother/son incest is a different kettle of fish altogether though, and by treating it as comedy Johnston doesn’t even attempt to try and challenge the reader’s preconceptions – he (or Percy) tries to convince us about Percy’s lust several times, but I felt like he was almost trying to convince himself too and I just couldn’t buy into it. No matter how disfigured Percy is or how beautiful Penny, I cannot imagine a son ever asking his mother for the things Percy asks for, at least not without some kind of psychiatric treatment being the outcome. And because I couldn’t believe in that relationship the whole book pretty much collapsed for me. It starts off as creepy and just gets creepier.

But (and it’s a big but), it is a testament to Johnston’s skill as a writer that there was much of the book, especially in the first 100 – 200 pages that I liked a great deal – he writes with real heart and generosity and there are parts of the novel that are laugh-out-loud funny, and even when my opinion of it started to lower in the second half I was still turning the pages as eagerly. I loved the scenes at number 44 in the evenings with the verbal sparring of Medina and Pops with Penny as referee; and Penny herself is a truly memorable larger-than-life creation. But there was also a degree to which I found all these characters, no matter how well-drawn within the confines of their roles in the novel, to be a bit one-note: for instance I couldn’t imagine Medina as a separately functioning person outside of that triangle – she works at a hospital but I just can’t picture her there; and Brother McHugh and the Archbishop are little more than caricatures. There is however some good stuff about being an outsider and about the power of the church.

Entertaining in parts, disturbing in others, but ultimately disappointing.

[Ellen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'd like to give this book 1 1/2 stars, but not doable.
I don't really know what I think of this book... it was definitely a little out of my comfort level. I know very little about the Catholic faith, but even so, I was a little offended by some of this story. The sexual content was also a little bit hard to take. I certainly wouldn't call myself a prude, but maybe I am, I just found a lot of this story to be offensive. The only reason I didn't give this book 1 star, or for that matter stop reading it, was a perverse desire to see how the whole thing ended. And, again not being a catholic, I found the last scene in the book quite bizarre. I can't recommend this book, but if anyone I know does read this book, I would love to hear your opinion of it. There is a lot of the usual Wayne Johnston humour, but even it got a little stale.

[Amanda · Rating 1 out of 5]

Long winded, uninteresting story of a boy who is in love with his mother. He needs to come to terms with the external disfigurements he was born with but I never got this resolved. 435 pages long without a proper rising action, climax or resolution, I am very disappointed with Johnston on this one.

[Jennifer Eagle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book, and its deeply complicated, flawed, human characters. It made me laugh, it made me squirm. Completely unselfconscious. The description of St. John's, Newfoundland was exquisite, as was the spot on depiction of its community mentality.

[Catherine Brosha · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a strange book. I'm not a prude, but this book was too much for me. I read it with a sense of disgust, really. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone... I felt as though it was trying to shock and disgust me.

[Trevor Pearson · Rating 4 out of 5]

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[Andrea Daly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read, but one that makes you feel very uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable! The narrator, Percy, delights in shocking the other characters, and shocking the reader.

[Lara Maynard · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favourite books read this year. And ever.

[Victoria Shepherd · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unrelenting, bold and often humourous, this tale of the immense power of the Carholic church and the perversity of humanity is disturbing and thought provoking.

[Natalie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perhaps not the best Wayne Johnston I've read, but still excellent. He truly is an outstanding storyteller and his characters are very compelling.

[Erika · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's St John's Newfoundland, mid 20th century in a section of the city saturated with Catholicism. Practically every block has a Catholic-run school.

As Johnston put it "...(St.John's) people were descended from a priest-ridden race. Its forgotten souls still walked the streets".

In the midst of this is a strange little family - Percy, who suffers severe bullying because of a birthmark which covers most of his face and head, and his single mom Penelope Joyce, whose disdain for the Catholic Church runs deep and is articulated with beautiful and poetic, sarcastic comment at every turn. Although she wishes to protect Percy from the bullying and the ideological absurdities all around him, her lack of financial resources leaves her with no alternative but to cow tow to the religious forces.

Then there's Medina, Penelope's sister-in-law and lover, and the boarder Doc, who, despite Penelope's derision towards him, remains in love with her and repeatedly proposes although he is rejected each time.

This is the starting point, and it gets more complicated as Percy's behavior at school results in consequences that reverberate throughout the community and especially within the walls of the Joyce household.

The book is beautifully written and the characters are compelling. The portrayal of the Catholic church is just scathing. There is nothing redeemable about it.

I'm not sure that the over the top sex drive of young Percy was altogether necessary, and the ending was just frustrating. I was expecting that somehow a way out of this situation that the Joyce's find themselves in, would be revealed. But of course there isn't always a way out. Especially not in overly repressed, overly religious mid 2oth century Newfoundland.

[Stacie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm kind of at a loss on this book. First it's really a 3.5. It would've been a 4 but I really struggled with the incestuous aspect, even though it's never realized. I felt for Percy, and being raised in the Catholic church, I understood Penny, her resistance against the prescribed expectations that deem people like her as outsiders, outlaws even. I think for the most part Percy does what he can in the screwed up situation he's in. If you can't beat them, tell them lies until nobody believes anything you say I guess. It's amazing to me all of the terrible things people get away with saying to him, but his lies are somehow the thing that could bring the whole church down. But where I couldn't absolve Percy is the lusting for his mother. Because in his admitting to her how much he wanted her, in his constant pursuit of her, he was no better than any of the other men who wanted to use Penny for their benefit, no matter what it did to her. And that what really disgusted me. He guilted her into agreeing to do something she really didn't want to, just like pops guilted her into getting married to protect Percy, just like McHugh used Guilt to lord over everyone. So in the end, Percy wasn't better than any of the others which was disappointing. Read this book if you can handle taboo subjects.

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

The coming of age story of one Percy Joyce, born with a severe congenital deformity in St. John’s NF in the 1950’s. Percy is bullied mercilessly for his freakish appearance, but also for being the son of a beautiful black Irish woman (Penelope) who just happens to be a “lizzie” in love with Medina, but also sleeping with the boarder “Pops” who helps pay the mortgage at 44 Bonaventure. Pops is the vice principal of the Catholic high school across the street. All in all, an unlikely family especially as Percy also lusts vigorously (along with Pops) after his mother. The tension arises largely between the suspected activities at 44 Bonaventure and the nearby Catholic institutions, and its devout Catholic community. The book is largely a screed against the Church and its male dominated power structure, along with Penelope’s outsized and very verbal defiance of its existence and persistence in her life. The first half of the book is both amusing and entertaining. The second half loses its way through repetition and almost veers off into farce as the climax of the book tests any sort of believability - as funny as many might find it to be.