Son (novel)

Plot

Son is written in three parts, each with a subtitle: Before, Between, and Beyond.

Before

The first section subtitled, Book One: Before, It takes place in the same location ("The Community") and at the same time as the first book in The Giver Quartet: The Giver. Claire's assigned occupation in the community is Birth Mother, whose primary responsibility is to give birth. At the start of the book, Claire is nearing the end of her pregnancy. She gives birth to her child at age 14, but complications during labor necessitate delivery by Cesarean section. Three weeks after giving birth, Claire reports to the birthing unit office and is reassigned to work at the Fish Hatchery. Before she leaves, she inquires after the baby she delivered, and the officer informs her that the baby is healthy, accidentally informing Claire that the child is male and number Thirty-Six in his year.

Claire retains curiosity for her son as she begins work at the Fish Hatchery, and begins casually volunteering at the infant nurturing center to see him. As she plays with Thirty-six, she quickly grows to love him, a feeling she finds that she alone experiences. She later realizes that all adult community members take pills which suppress emotions. As a Birth mother, she was instructed not to take the pills, and the matter was overlooked in her reassignment. Claire is told that Thirty-six is going "Elsewhere" due to his failure to thrive according to the community's standards. Before she can do anything, her son is saved and taken away by Jonas (the protagonist from The Giver). Claire attempts to follow them on a supply boat, but the boat soon encounters a strong storm and is shipwrecked.

Between

In the second section, subtitled Book Two: Between, Claire is rescued from the beach the supply boat shipwrecked on. She is taken in by a midwife named Alys while she tries to regain her memory, as she has suffered from temporary amnesia after the wreck. Once her memories return, a man named Lame Einar trains her to be able to escape the village they are in. She must be able to climb a steep cliff up out of the valley. After climbing the cliff, she meets an evil entity by the name of Trademaster. It offers to take her to her son if she trades her youth. Claire agrees, and is turned into an old woman and her son, named Gabriel (Gabe), is located.

Beyond

In the third and final section of the book, subtitled Book Three: Beyond, Gabe is now a young man, and has a power to see into other people's minds for a split second, a gift named veering. Gabe is also curious about his old home, and about who his mother really is. Meanwhile, Jonas notices the now old Claire and finds out that Claire is the mother of Gabe, and convinces Gabe that Claire is his mother and that the Trademaster is evil and caused her to grow old. Gabe is then told that the Trademaster must be killed. He meets the Trademaster, and veers into his body, and understands that the Trademaster is hungry for suffering. Gabe then tells the Trademaster of all the people that the Trademaster has tried to destroy, and how they are living happily again. This destroys the Trademaster, and when Gabe returns home, Claire returns to her younger self.

Themes and development

Themes in Son include those of love, obligation, sacrifice, and loss. Lowry had originally not planned on writing Son or any sequels to The Giver, but was inspired to write the story after she "decided to describe what became of him [Gabriel] as he grew up". Initially intending to center the book around Gabriel and his determination to discover his past, Lowry instead found herself being drawn to write more about Claire. She stated that "I wasn’t aware of it at the time ... but when I was writing of her yearning to find her boy, that was coming out of my own yearning to have my own son back."

Critical reception

Reception for Son has been mostly positive, with the book gaining starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews and Booklist. A reviewer for The Washington Post wrote that the book had a "quiet climax", stating that the ultimate "power of this parable" is that "It confronts us with some of the choices we are making and plays out the consequences." Robin Wasserman of The New York Times commented that Son did well as a standalone novel and praised Lowry's descriptions in the book. The Boston Globe criticized the book's "over-elaborations and pacing" while writing that "overall the journey is still worth the effort". The AV Club commented that while the book could have used more world-building, it is also "just plain good young-adult literature".