Book Review: Son

Title: Son
Author: Lois Lowry
Teen Reviewer: Timothy Wood
Rating: 3.5/5 Stars

 Claire is excited to have her first baby. As a birthmother in a dystopian society, it is an important job. But once the baby is delivered with complications, she is assigned to work at the fish hatchery, separated from her baby. Because of this, Claire stops taking a pill that stops the people in the community from feeling. She then becomes bored with her every day routine, and volunteers at the house for infants so that she can see her child. But something goes wrong, and after finding out that her child has been taken from the community, she leaves on one of the delivery ships and it crashes. Claire then wakes up, remembering nothing of her old life except small fragments of memories. Her goal now is to try to remember her life, and once she does, to find the child that was taken from her.

In her last book of the series, Lois Lowry has done a solid job in closing out the books. She does well in tying the books together and making connections between them. The Son is mostly Claire finding out who she is and what actions she takes once she finds that out, so there isn’t as much action as I would have liked. Still, in the action scenes that she does include, she provides great imagery and it is easy to picture the scenes as she is describing them. Lowry also does very well in the development of Claire herself. She provides scenes that reveal Claire’s character and her feelings about where she is living and what she is doing. Halfway through, the book switched gears, from Claire finding her child to Claire trying to understand her history. I was so involved with finding and re-attaching to the child, that when the switch came, I found that the momentum slowed down. However, I did find myself near the edge of my seat as the book came to a close.

Overall, I think that Lowry  does a good job of revealing the book’s purpose, without actually telling it to the reader. I would definitely recommend this book to people who like less action packed novels that explore themes of family, community, society and purpose.