[Review] The Son by Lois Lowry
Lowry, Lois. The Son. 400pp. Houghton Mifflin. Expected publication date October 2, 2012. 9780547887203. In this fourth and final installment of Lois Lowry’s The Giver Quartet, we revisit the Jonas and the rest of the characters from the same original community. This time around the story opens up to fourteen year old Claire in the bouts of labor, about to give birth to Gabe, the baby that Jonas’ family was assigned to raise and who was actually rescued at the end of The Giver.
Claire was having complications with the birthing process and had to be given a C-section, thus making her unacceptable as a birth mom. A birth mother’s job in this utopian society is just that, to give birth (via artificial insemination). Once a mother is finished with a birth, she is finished with her contribution to society until time for the next delivery.
Medicine is administered to all members of the society to keep them emotionally dettached from the experiences. After the C-section Claire was reassigned to the fisheries, but a glitch in the system caused Claire to not received her medicine and she begins to long for her child and find ways to try and see him. When the baby disappears, Claire sets out on a ten year journey to find him. Part of the sacrifices that Claire must make to locate her son is to give up her youth.
The examination of the forces of love between a mother and child are obvious, as well as the challenge of good against evil, however the ten year period that Claire spends at the seaside community gets a little bogged down leading to possible skim-overs by the readers. I will, however, include this title in my collection to complete the series.
Lowis Lowry on “Son”
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