The Good Parents (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780802170576)

A two-time winner of Australia's prestigious The Age Book of the Year Award, Joan London's debut novel, Gilgamesh, was published to rapturous acclaim both in her native Australia and in the United States. Now, London has delivered The Good Parents, a tender and compelling tale of mother love and the harrowing moment when a daughter spreads her wings and vanishes from her parents' orbit. Maya de Jong is an eighteen-year-old country girl who moves to Melbourne and begins an affair with her new boss. When Maya's parents, Toni and Jacob, arrive for a visit, Maya is gone--no one knows where. Maya, for reasons of her own, leaves haunting clues in late-night calls to her brother at home, carefully avoiding detection by the two people who love her most. Ultimately, to find her daughter Toni will have to revisit a part of her past that she thought she had shut off forever--the closest she ever came to being a lost girl herself. The Good Parents is at once utterly contemporary and a story as old as humanity itself: a stunning portrait of familial love and how far we can drift apart in the moments between the words we speak.

Author: Joan London
ISBN-10: 0802170579
ISBN-13: 9780802170576
Publisher: Grove Press, Black Cat
Language: English
Published: 02/03/2009
Pages: 368
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.90lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.40w x 1.10d

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 09/22/2008 pg. 35
Library Journal 10/01/2008 pg. 60
Kirkus Reviews 10/15/2008 pg. 1089
New York Times Book Review 02/22/2009 pg. 11
New York Times Book Review 03/01/2009 pg. 18
New Yorker (The) 04/06/2009 pg. 75