Comparisons with Alice Munro are inevitable. Bonnie Burnard has staked out similar territory, in this case, a Western Ontario town north of London up toward Lake Huron. Like Munro, Burnard has made her name with fine short-story collections that have attracted considerable acclaim: Women of Influence (1988) won the Commonwealth Prize for Best First Book, and Casino and Other Stories (1994) was shortlisted for the Giller Prize.

Now with Good House, Burnard parts ways with Munro to move into the novel, an epic one, spanning five decades and encompassing a large cast of family and neighbours. Here we feel Burnard’s cadences are very much her own, less edgy, more compassionate. At the centre of her story is one town, Stonebrook, one family, the Chamberses, and two people, Bill Chambers and his second wife, Margaret.

Burnard picks up the story as Bill returns from the Second World War, minus the fingers of his right hand but ready to begin a family and build a life. We come to know and care about these people; wives, sons and daughters, grandchildren. Burnard moves from her first establishing shot of Stonebrook at mid-century to close in on moments – be they intimate or casual or dramatic – that alter life profoundly. From the first vanished fingers, the Chamberses suffer more losses, some of them crushing: early and accidental death, maiming, divorce, “developmental handicap.” The most unfair, it seems, is the indignity of senile dementia which rewrites the essence of character itself. Yet even through this, somehow, the centre of family life mysteriously, miraculously holds, through love, in diverse and sometimes startling forms. Burnard’s wise and assured first novel is an accomplishment to celebrate.