Son

By: Lois Lowry

Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne

Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins

Publisher's summary

"They called her Water Claire."

When the young girl washed up on their shore, no one knew she had been a Vessel. That she had carried a Product. That it had been carved from her belly. Stolen.

Claire had had a son. She was supposed to forget him, but that was impossible. When he was taken from their community, she knew she had to follow. And so her journey began.

But here in this wind-battered village Claire is welcomed as one of their own. In the security of her new home, she is free and loved. She grows stronger. As tempted as she is by the warmth of more human kindness than she has ever known, she cannot stay. Her son is out there; a young boy by now. Claire will stop at nothing to find her child...even if it means trading her own life.

With Son, the two-time Newbery Medal - winning Lois Lowry has spun another mesmerizing tale in this thrilling and long-awaited conclusion to The Giver.

©2012 Lois Lowry (P)2012 Listening Library

Critic reviews

"Claire's story stands on its own, but as the final volume in this iconic quartet, it holistically reunites characters, reprises provocative socio-political themes, and offers a transcending message of tolerance and hope." ( Kirkus Reviews, starred review)

Beautiful ending

Amazing quartet of books and this was the perfect end. It's been so long since I've had such a heartfelt read. Just lovely.

Fun series to read

The ending left me hanging. I am wondering if there will be more books. Lois Lowery is a great author and I would recommend for young and old.

a modern fairytale

a story with hope and values to make you smile and believe in mankind and love.

great book

loved it! ties all the books before it together but can be read without reading the others

slow start but got great

Son:
"Book" (part) 1
Similar to The Giver in that it clearly Echoes common themes which are easily recognized as being inspired by Handmaid's Tale, 1984 & Brave New World only put in a somewhat softer form to address a younger target audience. The book does get a bit repetitive... both of content from The Giver and of the same content within Son.
"Book" (part) 2
A change in the whole feel of the book and quality of writing comes. I chuckled at the reference to a "selkie" & was curious if it was part of the authors knowledge from her history or if it was just a fine bit of research as its a rather lesser known mythical creature.


"But Claire choked back tears as she pedaled her bike back to the Hatchery. More and more she despised her life: the dull routine of the job, the mindless conversation with her coworkers, the endless repetition of her days."

"But she would never, under any circumstances, stifle the feelings she had discovered. She would die, Claire realized, before she would give up the love she felt for her son."
-
"The slate gray sea roiled, scraping the narrow strip of sand rhythmically, tugging at beach grass, digging and sucking loose the rocks at the shore’s edge."

"her eyes twinkled at her own memory. 'Only thirteen. But we was barefoot and flower-strewn and foolish with first love.' ”

" ''Why—'
'To hold memories. Scents do that. When you smelled the tea—'
'Yes. For a moment something came back,' the girl acknowledged. 'Like a bit of breeze. It drifted past. I couldn’t keep it with me. I wanted—' But she couldn’t say what she wanted. She sighed and shook her head. 'It went away.' ”

"Fear dims when you learn things.”

"Sometimes the sea was quiet and blue as well, but most days it churned dark gray-green, with spumes of white blown and dissolved in the air. Claire liked that darkness as well, with its relentless motion and mystery, though she blamed the sea for hiding her past in its depths."

" 'They scream from the pain and then weaken as the blood flows. Their eyes die first.' The old woman’s own eyes seemed to look into the distance, thinking of the terrible things she had seen and could not heal."

“My people—” (“My people”? What did that mean? She didn’t really know) “They thought that it fixed a lot of ills, not to have feelings like love.”
“Fools,”

"For years a mysterious, sinister man known as Trademaster had appeared now and then in the village, bringing tawdry thrills and temptations but leaving chaos and discontentment behind."
Son by Lois Lowry

"He had begun business many years ago—as a wandering peddler on the blind face of a distant land, a peddler who carried his wares on his back, a peddler who usually came at the fall of darkness and was always gone the next morning, leaving bloodshed, horror, and unhappiness behind him."
Needful Things by Stephen King

"Ladies and gentlemen, attention, please!
Come in close where everyone can see!
I got a tale to tell, it isn’t gonna cost a dime!
(And if you believe that,
we’re gonna get along just fine.)"
Needful Things by Stephen King

" 'Evil can do anything, Gabe,' Mentor said, 'for a price.' "
Son by Lois Lowry

"The three words that he had spoken soothed the sky, the river, the world."
Son by Lois Lowry

"This was not a man, Gabe realized. It was a force disguised as a man. It was nothing human. It was simple evil, wearing a cloak."

Empathy with the Devil, or 'A Mum Loves Her Child'

The final member of Lois Lowry's Giver Quartet, Son (2012), is a recapitulation of the main genres of the earlier three novels, being itself comprised of three 'books,' the first an sf dystopia like The Giver (1993), the second a post-apocalypse story like Gathering Blue (2000), and the third a Christian allegory like Messenger (2004). Son is the capstone to the Quartet, but Lowry includes in it enough backstory from the first three works to ensure that readers new to her series can understand this one on its own.

'Book One: Before' begins about a year before the events of The Giver, and depicts the appalling emotional and reproductive control that the community Elders exercise over their people. Claire is an innocent 14-year-old girl who's been assigned to be a 'Birthmother' without being told what it entails. Like all 'Productions' in the community, hers is achieved artificially. This ensures more control over reproduction and is necessary anyway because the emotion-suppressing medication everyone must take at the onset of puberty makes sexual and other love impossible. During deliveries the 'Vessels' are blindfolded to prevent them from seeing their 'Products.' Claire's difficult delivery requires her doctors to cut her belly open, and she realizes that they care more for the Product than for the Vessel. Because of such complications, Claire is decertified as Birthmother and assigned a new career in the Fish Hatchery. There is no question of her seeing her Product, because this is never done. Due to an oversight by the Elders in charge of her case, Claire does not go back on her medication and thus feels a deep loss, sadness, and loneliness. Occasionally volunteering at the Nurturing Center, she is able to spend some precious time with her Product, her boy, number 36--concealing that she is his mother. This is the best section in the novel: devastating.

'Book Two: Between' depicts Claire ending up in a small, unindustrialized fishing village, learning there about seasons, precipitation, colors, animals, illness, and love (none of which were present in her old community), resolving to find her son, and undergoing (with the guidance of a sweet, lame young man) intense physical training to become able to attempt to climb a forbidding cliff to leave the fishing village. If successful, she'll have to decide whether or not to make an appalling bargain with the satanic Trademaster from Messenger. This is the second-best section: compelling.

'Book Three: Beyond' is narrated from the point of view of 15-year-old or so Gabe in the Village of Messenger as he works on his pet project, making a boat in which to sail back to the community that Jonas rescued him from 14 or so years ago, all to find his Birthmother, who, unbeknownst to him is in Village watching him with a 'fierce, knowing intimacy.' Jonas, who can see Beyond, senses Trademaster malevolently monitoring Gabe. Will Gabe be able to mature into a sun of a son? Son, like the quartet as a whole, then, morphs away from a political or social exploration of dystopia into an allegory of human nature confronting evil while being enriched by love, especially maternal love. This is the third-best section: too obviously and easily allegorical.

Does Son bring the quartet together and conclude it satisfyingly? Yes--but I found it less ambiguous than The Giver, less absorbing than Gathering Blue, less moving than Messenger, and less tight than the previous three novels. Lowry summarizes a bit more of the first part in the second and third parts than is necessary. And like most YA (still today) her novel lacks people of color and different sexual orientations and after all ends up rather conservatively regarding gender with a Son rather than a Daughter. (Indeed, despite the presence of strong Kira in Gathering Blue and Claire here, the saviors and leaders of Lowry's quartet are male.) There are also some things that don't hold together so well. It's hard to believe that Jonas' high tech community would not have made more of an impact on the less developed communities or vice versa. Given their close relationship in The Giver, I'd expect Jonas and Gabe to be living together in Village (even if when Jonas showed up with Gabe he didn't think he was mature enough to raise a baby). Perhaps plot is overruling character here.

Mind you, Son is an ambitious, strong novel! Lowry avoids typical YA moves like romantic triangles, violent action scenes, and obvious punishments for villains. I like Gabe calming a stormy river by saying, 'I cannot kill.' I like the supernatural gifts of the main characters being less about physical strength and more about insight. (Gabe's gift is 'veering,' an extreme form of empathy.) She depicts flawed but essentially good people we care about. She excels at dramatic irony, as with Gabe's burning desire to go find his mother when she's living in Village with him.

Bernadette Dunne reads the audiobook well. Apart from doing a creepy malevolent Trademaster, she doesn't change her voice dramatically for characters of different genders or ages or cultures, but just imbues each character's voice with the appropriate emotions and agendas etc. for each moment.

Readers of the first three books MUST read this last one, and though I still think The Giver should have been left to stand alone in its austere ambiguity--I am glad to have read all of the quartet, filled as it is of limpid writing, appealing characters, moving stories, and serious themes.

It was a little slow

It’s a little slow in the beginning but after a little bit it gets more interesting, it is very good and it was very fun to listen to

curious places

great story map, tying things together in worlds closer than we think. a good listen

Good Story

Love this series a lot. The only things that bring this book down a bit for me are inconsistencies with “Before” and The Giver. Love “Between” and “Beyond” though!

Unimaginative conclusion (could be perceived as a spoiler)

As always, excellent captivating writing style and overall an excellent storyline as well as good weaving together of the 4 stories characters into the 4th book in the series. Characters are always well developed and easy to route for. With that said, I was critical of Lowry’s conclusion of “Messenger” and the conclusion of “Son” brings forth the same unimaginative type of wind down. In “Messenger” the ending was a miracle because it was illogical to what she had established as the order in the world she created, this ending was more of a let down as the reader is expecting meat but receives dry toast. Potential spoiler of the ending—Surely the author has a underdeveloped understanding of evil in order to think it could be vanquished by such triviality in the end. Perhaps this is derived from the authors desire to not overstimulate her intended young audience, which, if is the case, is understandable, but the execution in the final chapter did not strike me as believable because of the ease at which victory over evil was attained.