I love this novel! I love the characters, especially Darlene/Dolly, Trevor and Clara of course. I thought the kids sounded authentic. Lorraine's behaviour was a little hard to believe at the end of the story, and Clara definitely had door-mat tendancies. But all in all, I thought it was great. I like reading about that complex theme of motherhood! And the book really stresses that whole "it takes a community to raise a child" business!

A middle aged life thrown into chaos, a baring of the heart and soul and a long hard look at mother love in all its many layers. Saskatoon setting is fun to read, Ukrainian next door neighbour is lovingly recoginizable and the preteen character 'Dolly' is a true joy to follow.

Good book, would recommend this book to others. I found the narrative switch between characters a little confusing and the ending realistic but I could have used a little bit more information to feel a certain closure to the book I am still craving. Worth a read!

This is a good book, I'm not enamoured with it but it is worthy of all it's prizes.

I was completely engaged by this book, tho found the denouement a bit clumsy and abrupt. I think the ending was believable but I would have liked a little more insight into the workings of the mother's mind before she acts the way she does. Still a very good read.

Bizarre and lonely characters cause one to wonder how much selfless deeds are done for one's own personal joy and satisfaction.

Great read if you are in mid-life, transitioning in either your career or personal life, and especially if you spent anytime living in Saskatoon. Clara Purdy, the main character, lives in Saskatoon and tells about her life-changing experiences resulting from a car accident she apparently caused. The transitions she passes through in the story are spinster to mother, single to lover, loner to community-minded church-goer and general catalyst. Her seemingly meaningless life as a divorced adult orphan morphs into her becoming the caregiver and facilitator for the three children who survive the accident and then come and live with her. Her live becomes a revolving door of tired bliss as she coordinates their daily care, growth and development and welcomes friends and neighbors to help her with the job. The story is charming and frustrating at the same time. What some may find frustrating is the constant self-editing that Clara and Paul, the other main character and Clara's friend, confident and lover constantly engage in during the narrative of the story. The other frustration for some may be how the story ends...you get to decide what happens. If you don't like sad cancer stories, you may also find this a hard read.

Book Club guide from Freehand Books available at:

http://www.freehand-books.com/book-clubs/documents/GTAFreadingguide.pdf

Marina Endicott's second novel, Good to a Fault was a finalist for the Giller Prize in 2008 and a winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize for the region of Canada and the Caribbean in 2009. This book was also listed as one of the Globe and Mail's top 100 books of 2008. Born in Golden, British Columbia and brought up in Vancouver, Nova Scotia and Toronto has also been the dramaturge of the Saskatchewan Playwrights Centre, which accounts for this novel being set in Saskatoon. She currently lives in Edmonton.

Good to a Fault can be seen as a twenty-first century re-casting of the parable of the Good Samaritan. Clara Purdy is a 43 year old divorced insurance agent, who has been living a quiet and drab life since the death of both of her parents. She literally takes a “wrong turn” one day, making an illegal left turn, which results in a collision with a down and out family in the other car. But this wrong turn is in reality a felix culpa, a “fortunate sin”, a “sin” which makes redemption possible. In the aftermath of the accident at the hospital, Clara finds out that the mother of the family, Lorraine, has cancer which needs immediate and prolonged treatment. At church a few days later Clara knows what she has to do: “She had worked in shelters ... it was not possible for her to send them to a shelter. During the Hosanna, in the high cascading descant, she'd known what she had to do. If any of this was true, if there was God. She had wanted useful work: this was it. And if there was no God, then even more, she had to do it.” Clara takes in the whole family which includes a nursing baby, 2 children, the shoplifting grandmother and the shiftless husband.

Clara’s life and the lives of all those around her are transformed by her act of mercy. Transformation is not always comfortable and Endicott deftly underlines both the humour and the pathos of Clara's journey. There is a book club guide for Good to a Fault on the publisher’s website, and it says “What, exactly, does it mean to be good? When is sacrifice merely selfishness? What do we owe in this life and what do we deserve? Marina Endicott looks at life and death through the compassionate lens of a born novelist: being good, being at fault, and finding some balance on the precipice.”

T.F. Rigelhof in the Globe and Mail said “Marina Endicott is really funny, a sweet-natured but sharp-eyed and quick-tongued social observer in the Jane Austen-Barbara Pym-Anne Tyler tradition, who can wring love, revulsion and hilarity from readers in a single page.” He also compares this novel to Barbara Gowdy's Helpless.

Endicott herself admits that she based the book on a real life incident. In her interview with Martin Morrow for CBC after the Giller nomination, Endicott said “A tidy little K Car collided with an old beater. A very nice woman got out of the K-car, quite apologetic and worried, and the doors and windows flew open in the beater and about 15 people poured out, all screaming and yelling. That moment of chaos, of slapstick and disaster mixed, just stuck in my mind for years.” There are other echoes of Endicott's life in the plot: she lost family members to cancer and had cancer herself. Her father was an Anglican priest and much of the novel revolves around the Clara's relationship with her parish priest. She references real Saskatoon locations, which attracted me because I too spent many years there.

As I was reading, I found myself thinking, "I want more." I loved the premise of the story, but I found the pacing very slow. I am glad I read it, but not one I would highly recommend.

Good stuff, here ... this is a story I found difficult to put down. Single woman in early forties gets into a car accident with homeless family, the mother of which is about to be diagnosed with a terminal illness. The narrative style is rather sparse, but the different voices/perspectives lend great depth to the characters in terms of their development, and despite the flaws in their natures we are still able to feel empathy for each and every one of them. Highly recommended.

This absorbing novel recounts in lively, touching and suspenseful detail the aftermath of worlds literally colliding. Lonely, middle-aged and middle-class Clara's car connects fatefully with that of the gypsy-like Gage family. While hospitalized after the crash, mother Lorraine learns that her bruises are actually an indication of late-stage cancer. Clara suddenly finds new meaning in her life as she takes charge of Lorraine's three children, elementary school age Dolly and Trevor and infant Pearce, and elderly, cantankerous mother-in-law. As Lorraine battles cancer, Clara raises Lorraine's family after L's husband Clayton flees the situation. Clara's friends and family rally round, and everyone learns about their capacity for patience, compassion and love. This novel offers probing reflections on selflessness versus selfishness, on charity, on all forms and types of love and caring for one's fellow human beings.

An aspect of this novel that I initially found distracting was Endicott's propensity for changing the narrator's perspective so frequently, sometimes in mid-paragraph. By the end of the novel, however, I appreciated how much richer an overall experience the novel was for its interwoven voices. The novel mimics how voices naturally intermingle in normal group conversations, as if all of the characters are trying to describe the story to the reader at the same time.

Another striking aspect of this novel is its simple but arresting cover artwork. I'm not sure how often this sort of thing is remarked upon in reviews, but this book's cover haunted me throughout. It's a very simple picture of the end of an interior wall or doorway, upon which you can see the marks of someone measuring the heights of children. There are only a few marks, however, whereas in a home and a family where this is a tradition, there would be lots of marks. It said to me that Clara yearned to have a family and simple traditions like that, but that she only got to enjoy them for a short while. It turns out that this was the reasoning behind the image, as explained in these lovely and moving insights from the designer, which includes comments from author Marina Endicott:

http://daviddrummond.blogspot.com/2008/10/good-to-fault.html