Before You Know Kindness: A Novel [Abridged, Audiobook] [Audio Cassette]

Chris Bohjalian (Author), Blair Brown (Reader)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 5, 2004

For ten summers, the Seton family—all three generations—met at their country home in New England to spend a week together playing tennis, badminton, and golf, and savoring gin and tonics on the wraparound porch to celebrate the end of the season. In the eleventh summer, everything changed. A hunting rifle with a single cartridge left in the chamber wound up in exactly the wrong hands at exactly the wrong time, and led to a nightmarish accident that put to the test the values that unite the family—and the convictions that just may pull it apart.

Before You Know Kindness is a family saga that is timely in its examination of some of the most important issues of our era, and timeless in its exploration of the strange and unexpected places where we find love.

As he did with his earlier masterpiece, Midwives, Chris Bohjalian has written a novel that is rich with unforgettable characters—and absolutely riveting in its page-turning intensity.

“Few writers can manipulate a plot with Bohjalian’s grace and power.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Chris Bohjalian’s many fans will be glad to know he’s back on the high wire, expertly balancing topical issues with the more timeless concerns of the human heart. His well-drawn, sympathetic characters deepen and intensify the novel’s gripping plot rather than simply serving it. Before You Know Kindness is smart, first-rate storytelling.”—Richard Russo, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Empire Falls

“Once again, Chris Bohjalian dares to tackle the complexities—and complacencies—of modern society at its most vulnerable spot, where the personal clashes with the political, where the private is forced to go public. And once again, he forges a drama that will keep his readers on the edge of their seats...perhaps their conscience as well.”—Julia Glass, winner of the National Book Award for Three Junes

“Chris Bohjalian’s magnificent new novel, Before You Know Kindness, is the best work of fiction I’ve read about an American family since Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club. It is one of the funniest, best-written, most compassionate, most engaging, and flat-out most enjoyable novels I’ve ever read.”—Howard Frank Mosher, winner of the New England Book Award for A Stranger in the Kingdom

“Elegant, refined...a triumph.” —Booklist (starred review)

Also available as a Random House AudioBook, a Large Print edition, and an eBook.


From the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If you imagine most writer's bathrooms (and this is probably a mistake) you'd picture damp towels in a clump on the floor, hair in the soap, a few mildewed paperbacks stacked on the counter. But it's impossible to picture Chris Bohjalian's bathroom as anything but an Architectural Digest centerfold: polished counters, not a stray thread on the plush towels, the modulated colors sparked to life by fresh flowers from a neighbor's garden.

Bohjalian's eighth novel, Before You Know Kindness, is a beautifully observed, delicately balanced portrait of a family that could only come from the hands of a tireless craftsman who keeps reaching into his story to straighten the tulips or tuck in a shirttail. It begins with two EMTs leaning over animal rights' activist Spencer McCullough's gushing shotgun wound and winds back through the ordinary days leading up to the extraordinary accident, and then forward again as Spencer and his family come to terms with what has happened. As ambitious as other Bohjalian novels, Before You Know Kindness spirals out to encompass the larger issues of Spencer's political loyalties and the heartless, passionate world of political spin. Some readers may find Bohjalian's style too smooth. Others will relish the completeness of his vision and his obvious tenderness for even the most difficult of his characters. --Regina Marler --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Bohjalian's new novel begins with a literal bang: a bullet from a hunting rifle accidentally strikes Spencer McCullough, an extreme advocate for animal rights, leaving him seriously wounded. The weapon—owned by his brother-in-law, John, and shot by his 12-year-old daughter, Charlotte—becomes the center of a lawsuit and media circus led by Spencer's employer, FERAL (Federation for Animal Liberation), a dead ringer for PETA. The many-faceted satire Bohjalian (Midwives, etc.) crafts out of these events revolves around Spencer and Jon's families, but also involves a host of secondary figures. Bohjalian excels at getting inside each character's head with shifts of diction and perspective, though he makes it difficult for readers to connect with any one in particular. This is in part because his portraits are often unsympathetic; the characters are allowed to hoist themselves on their own petards. While some are credibly flawed—Spencer is both a loving father and an obnoxious activist—others are cartoonishly mocked with their own thoughts, like high-powered attorney Paige, who mourns the loss of her leather chairs and briefcases, hidden away for as long as FERAL is a lucrative client. If there is a grounded center to this work, it is 10-year-old Willow, Spencer's niece, who distinguishes herself from this baggy ensemble by always trying to do the right thing. She alone is spared the narrator's irony, and it is Willow, years after the accident, who has the last word. Bohjalian's skewering of the animal rights movement gets the better of his domestic drama, but his skillful storytelling will engage readers.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Random House Audio; Abridged edition (October 5, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0739314149
• ISBN-13: 978-0739314142
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (59 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,745,401 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Chris Bohjalian is the author of fourteen books, including the New York Times bestsellers, The Night Strangers, Secrets of Eden, Skeletons at the Feast, The Double Bind, Before You Know Kindness, The Law of Similars, and Midwives.

His new novel, The Night Strangers, is a ghost story inspired by a door in his basement and Sully Sullenberger's successful ditching of an Airbus in the Hudson River.

Secrets of Eden, his 2010 novel, will air as a Lifetime Television movie on January 28, 2012. It stars John Stamos and Anna Gunn.

Chris won the New England Book Award in 2002, and his novel, Midwives, was a number one New York Times bestseller, a selection of Oprah's Book Club, a Publishers Weekly "Best Book," and a New England Booksellers Association Discovery pick. His work has been translated into over 25 languages and twice before become movies ("Midwives" and "Past the Bleachers"). You can see some of the international covers on this web site.

He has written for a wide variety of magazines, including Cosmopolitan, Reader's Digest, and the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, and has been a Sunday columnist for Gannett's Burlington Free Press since 1992. Chris graduated from Amherst College, and lives in Vermont with his wife and daughter.

You can learn more about him here on the Q and A, as well as on Facebook . And, if you like, follow him on twitter as well.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

58 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A powerful and engrossing domestic drama., October 10, 2004

By 

E. Bukowsky "booklover10" (NY United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Before You Know Kindness: A Novel (Hardcover)

Chris Bohjalian specializes in the dissection of families in crisis. In "Midwives" and "The Buffalo Soldier," to name two of his best works, Bohjalian shows how previously happy families are brought low by the vicissitudes of life and by their own frailties. "Before You Know Kindness" (a mushy title that does not do justice to this fine book) tells the story of the Seton clan. Nan Seton is a widowed, wealthy, and endlessly energetic matriarch who spends her winters in her large apartment in Manhattan and her summers in the family home in New Hampshire. Every summer, Nan invites her son and daughter, John and Catherine, along with their spouses and children, to spend some time with her. Under Nan's direction, the family participates in an endless and dizzying round of athletic and social activities.

The book opens with a horrifying scene in which Spencer McCullough, Nan Seton's son-in-law, is accidentally shot in the shoulder, and very nearly killed. Spencer is an animal rights activist whose fanaticism on the subject is comic fodder for Bohjalian. Whether he is forcing inedible foods down his family's throats or insisting that his relatives wear plastic shoes, not leather, Spencer is unyielding in his insistence that no living thing with a parent should be a source of food or clothing for human beings. Spencer's overbearing personality and frequent absences from home have already alienated his wife, Catherine, who is ready to give up on her marriage.

After the shooting, the entire family goes into shock. This event shakes up everyone's comfortable assumptions about their lives and one another, and it forces them to reevaluate what is really important to them. Bohjalian is an expert at finding and articulating the telling detail that brings an event or an individual to life. For example, in the prologue, Bohjalian immediately grabs the reader's attention by providing an extensive description of the bullet that hits Spencer, the anatomical damage that it inflicts, and the heroic efforts of the EMT's who fight to keep Spencer alive until he reaches the hospital. The many scenes like this throughout the book draw the reader into the action, as if the author is engaged in an intense conversation with us in his living room.

Chris Bohjalian is an intimate writer, who examines each character minutely, showing us both their strengths and weaknesses, but always preserving their humanity. "Before You Know Kindness" is filled with gentle humor, sharp dialogue, and careful plotting. My two quibbles are the book's length and the pat ending. At over four hundred pages, the novel sags at times, and it could have been trimmed by at least fifty pages. In addition, Bohjalian wraps up his story a bit too neatly. However, the author's deep understanding of both children and adults impresses me, and I love how he opens a window into each character's mind and heart. No one depicts a family, with its disappointments, tragedies, hopes, and triumphs, with more skill and compassion than Chris Bohjalian.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Layered personalities and layered motives. I loved it!, October 8, 2006

By 

Linda Linguvic (New York City) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Before You Know Kindness: A Novel (Hardcover)

The book opens with the description of a gunshot wound. There's no mystery. We know right away that Spencer McCullough, while visiting his mother-in-law in New Hampshire with his wife and family, is accidentally shot by his 12-year old daughter, Charlotte. He doesn't die but the wound has destroyed his shoulder. He will never be able to use his arm again and it will eventually have to be amputated.

We then flash back a few days and we get to meet the family. They're upscale and, this home in New Hampshire is Nan McCullough's second home. During the winter months she lives in a sprawling Upper East Side Manhattan apartment. Her daughter Sara is married to Spencer, who is works as an animal rights activist and makes speeches around the country. To many, people including myself, he seems a bit of a nutjob because he doesn't even allow his daughter to wear leather shoes or ever visit a zoo. Also visiting their mother that week is Nan's other grown child, John, a lawyer, married to Sara, a psychologist. They have a 10-year old daughter, Willow, and a newborn baby boy. They live in Vermont, and even though they understand the animal rights issues, John has recently taken up hunting and has left a gun with a bullet in the back of his car.

How this all plays out is complicated and intriguing. The author uses a lot of words and brings out the subtleties of everyone's personality. He is especially insightful regarding the children. I understood exactly what each individual was going though, both before and after the gunshot incident. This is a book with layered personalities and layered motives. I got to know each character deeply. The experience of reading the book was like just joining in on their lives.

But this book is more than just about the relationships among the people. Central to the theme is the animal rights movement. There is a potential lawsuit against the gun manufacturer with full blown media attention. Is this motive really altruistic? Is it about ambition? What about the relationship between the wounded father and his sorrowful daughter? There's also a secret that the two young girls know about the shooting that night that could change everything. What happens in the next few months? And how does it all end?

The book is 422 pages and I read it rather quickly. And during the time I was reading it I felt I knew every person intimately. The way the book was constructed just pulled me right in. I thought about it constantly and pondered the moral questions it brought up. This is a good read. It also made me think.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An anatomy of a family, November 27, 2004

By 

Theresa W (mi, usa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Before You Know Kindness: A Novel (Hardcover)

Having been a huge fan of all Bohjalian's previous books, Before You Know Kindness was at the top of my list to read when it came out. Taking on vegetarians, vegans and gun control, this book tackels a lot of topics and does so with finess.

Underneath all of the central topics, as in most of his books, family and relationships are at the heart of this book. And what tragedy or difference can do to a family, a relationship. What I enjoyed about the book was that Bohjalian did not clearly make a stance on whether he thought hunting was wrong, or that people should not eat meat. Although, it was obvious that gun control, and learning how to properly care for a gun was foremost in his mind.

Overall, another great book by Bohjalian! I enjoyed the characters and their development. I especially enjoyed the ending which was well worth the wait and truly made the entire book for me. If you're new to his writing- I think once you read this you'll do what I did and devour his entire catalogue! Happy Reading!