Published in 2008
376 pages
Marina Endicott was born in Golden, BC, and grew up with three sisters and a brother, mostly in Nova Scotia and Toronto. She worked as an actor and director before going to England, where she began to write fiction. After London she went west to Saskatoon, where she was dramaturge at the Saskatchewan Playwrights Centre for many years before going farther west to Mayerthorpe, Alberta; she now lives in Edmonton. Her first novel, Open Arms, was short-listed for the Amazon/Books In Canada First Novel award in 2002. Her second, Good to a Fault, was a finalist for the 2008 Giller Prize and won the 2009 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book, Canada/Caribbean region. The Little Shadows, her latest book, longlisted for the 2011 Giller Prize, was a finalist for this year’s Governor General’s Award and will be published in the UK and Australia in spring 2012.
What is this book about?
In a novel reminiscent of the work of Penelope Lively, Anne Tyler, and Alice Munro, acclaimed author Marina Endicott gives us one of the most satisfying, most profound, and most memorable reads of the year.
Absorbed in her own failings, Clara Purdy crashes her life into a sharp left turn, taking the young family in the other car along with her. When bruises on the mother, Lorraine, prove to be late-stage cancer, Clara―against all habit and comfort―moves the three children and their terrible grandmother into her own house. We know what is good, but we don’t do it. In Good to a Fault, Clara decides to give it a try, and then has to cope with the exhaustion, fury, hilarity, and unexpected love. But she must question her own motives. Is she acting out of true goodness, or out of guilt? Most shamefully, has she taken over simply because she wants the baby for her own? What do we owe in this life, and what do we deserve? This compassionate, funny, and fiercely intelligent novel looks at life and death through grocery-store reading being good, being at fault, and finding some balance on the precipice.
