Review of 'The Good Father' by Noah Hawley

This is one of those books that I would never normally pick up based off its cover. However, it was a book club read and one that showed me why perhaps I should give more books the benefit of the doubt. 

Set in the US after a man assassinates a prime democrat presidential candidate, this book is told from two points of view: the father of the killer and the killer himself. The father can't quite believe that his son who he has grown distant from but still loves deeply would do something like this, so he set out to prove his innocence despite the fact that the son has never proclaimed he is innocent. The book takes you on the father's increasingly desperate attempts to make sense of what happened, and makes you question it too. 

The son's chapters on the other hand show his life in the years leading up to the murder he commits. You see the incidents in his early years that may have affected who he became as an adult, as well as the issues he had in the years preceding the murder.

The book really is as sad tale of regret from a father who never bothered to take the time to try to understand his child until he was forced to. He'd always considered himself to be a good father, despite the split with his ex wife and not living with his son. For me, his attempts to find out what really happened on the day, and rationalise the murder as either not being committed by his son or as his son being radicalised, was not really about his son: it was about the fact that he couldn't face the idea that he hadn't been the father he thought he was. He had to re-evaluate his own identity, rather than his son's.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The author included snippets about other high profile US assassinations throughout which I found very interesting as I really didn't know much about any of them. The emotional journey that the father went on was really well done, and I found myself along with him willing the son to not have committed the crime. I liked the fact that the book kept you guessing at the end - there's a segment of the son's life missing that the father cannot find the answers to and is kept from the reader in the son's sections. It means that I came away with different thoughts about what may or may not have happened in that time than other readers and thus a different perception of the book as a whole. 

I gave this four stars and would recommend it for fans of Louise Doughty's books.

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