Son (Lowry)

Book Reviews
A beautifully wrought political fable.... A consummate stylist, Lowry handles it all magnificently: the leaps in time, the shifts in perspective, the moments of extreme emotion—fear, joy, sadness—all conveyed in unadorned prose that seizes the heart.... This is the rare concluding volume that will send readers back to the first.
Mary Quattlebaum - Washington Post


Drawing characters and themes from The Giver and its companions, Gathering Blue and Messenger, Lowry concludes her Giver Quartet nearly 20 years after the Newbery Medal–winning first book was published. The story is divided into three sections, and in the completely absorbing opening, Lowry transports readers back to the horrifying world from which Jonas came. The spotlight is on 14-year-old Claire, a Birthmother who is given an emergency Caesarean to save “the Product.” The child survives, but Claire is coldly “decertified” and sent to work elsewhere, mystified as to what happened to her and her baby. Those familiar with The Giver will feel the pieces fall into place as Claire figures out which Product is hers and tracks his progress. Part two details Claire’s decade-long struggle to remember who she is, and it suffers slightly from having a main character afflicted with a well-worn plot device (amnesia); the final third reunites characters from all three previous novels for a showdown with evil incarnate. If the latter sections don’t quite keep up with the thrilling revelations of the first, Lowry still ties together these stories in a wholly satisfying way.
Publishers Weekly


Son is a tender conclusion to this memorable story, and definitely the best of the books in this sequence since The Giver itself.
School Library Journal


(Starred review.) Lowry is one of those rare writers who can craft stories as meaningful as they are enticing.
Booklist


In this long-awaited finale to the Giver Quartet, a young mother from a dystopian community searches for her son and sacrifices everything to find him living in a more humane society with characters from The Giver (1993), Gathering Blue (2000) and Messenger (2004). A designated Birthmother, 14-year-old Claire has no contact with her baby Gabe until she surreptitiously bonds with him in the community Nurturing Center.... Intent on finding Gabe, she single-mindedly scales the cliff, encounters the sinister Trademaster and exchanges her youth for his help in finding her child.... Written with powerful, moving simplicity, Claire's story stands on its own, but as the final volume in this iconic quartet, it holistically reunites characters, reprises provocative socio-political themes, and offers a transcending message of tolerance and hope. Bravo!
Kirkus Reviews