Review: The Golden Boy, by Patricia Finn
Toronto: HarperCollins Canada, 2026
Vancouver-based author Patricia Finn's debut novel is a book that speaks to both the emotions and the intellect. It's a great read, and I had the opportunity to review it for The British Columbia Review. This article was originally published on March 9, 2026 at thebcreview.ca.
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If in midlife you found yourself secure in an existence that you’d carefully built to isolate you from the storms of the past, and that unsettled past came calling to collect one innocuous, sunny day, would you face it head on, or hide yourself away? This is a central question that Vancouver-based writer Patricia Finn poses in her debut novel The Golden Boy. She asks it and suggests an answer with a large helping of Aristotelian philosophy.
Set largely in 2003, Stafford Hopkins has recently lost his job as a high-level television executive in there U.S. Coming from humble beginnings as the son of a dairy farmer in rural Ontario, he’s made a wild success of himself. By his late fifties, he’s very rich and ready to retire to the golden shores of Hawaii with his American wife Agnes, perfecting his golf game while Agnes organizes sterile and perfect dinner parties. The only problem? He wakes crying every morning.
With that latter development, Finn grabbed my attention.
I enjoyed this novel so much. I’m often drawn to books that deliver not only on an emotional level, but also on an intellectual one. The book is largely focused on Aristotle’s philosophy, particularly the teaching of “the golden mean,” a concept that refers to flourishing and happiness (eudaimonia) in life by walking a middle path, one between the extremes of excess and deficiency. The subject of a recent New York Times profile, author Finn comes with credentials that inform her writing, as she has completed post-graduate education in English with a focus on Aristotle’s philosophy.
If this sounds a bit heavy or overly intellectual, worry not. The beauty of this novel is that you can read it for the compelling story alone, which is inviting and well-paced and gives great insight into Stafford and Agnes’s characters and growth. Along the way you may pick up some philosophical principles, and Finn’s textual structure makes this an easy thing to do.
The Golden Boy is presented in three parts, though the narrative overlaps a great deal. The first explores the present state of Stafford’s life (“Boulesis,” or “rational desire”); the second largely details his emotionally fraught boyhood (“Epithumia,” or “irrational appetite”); and the third the possibility of a future path he may or may not choose to engage in (“Thumos,” or “courage,” a quality that bridges reason and appetite).
In “Boulesis,” Finn paints the picture of a perfectly controlled life that has been hard-won, but at this point feels like a kingly privilege that Stafford and Agnes see as their due. They live in the present, firmly and concretely. They absolutely do not dwell on the past, and their days are occupied by a comfortable and curated routine (coffee, the country club, the golf game, the dinner party). Finn writes, “he was a successful man, his happiness maintained by diet, exercise, and well-planned trips to fine places. They had many friends, he and his wife, and they were managed carefully like other things. It had been a long time since anything in their lives was left to chance, and they had always been in agreement that it did not pay to be careless.” If that’s not a set-up, I don’t know what is.
Agnes rules their social life with a ruthless efficiency, and her attunement to the necessary strictures of their social station is breathtaking. As is the sterile comfort of their gorgeous home, set on a Hawaiian hillside and surrounded by high gates and a security system. It was hard not to be drawn into a grudging envy of their wealth, gentility, and security, and I think that’s the point. Just underneath this manufactured sense of control, there is a world that Stafford and Agnes don’t let in. At times, this is exemplified by the shame and guilt of their relationship with their estranged daughter Callie. Uncertainty also creeps in when Stafford almost drowns in the pull of an innocent-looking ocean that harbours a violent riptide. And of course it’s evidenced by Stafford’s secretive morning crying jags.
The possibility of change—and the instability that comes with it—arrives in the form of a letter from Stafford’s Ontarian hometown. His boyhood best friend Bobby Shepherd has a request from beyond the grave, one that will ask Stafford to shed his careful life and take emotional risks.
“Epithumia” focuses more on Stafford and Agnes’ backstories. Here, so much of what has happened to them informs their flight from “irrational appetite,” those passions of youth that burn, and those risks they’ve taken to love deeply, only to be hurt, sometimes shattered. There’s a heartbreaking story of Agnes and her mother, a gut-punch episode that lends so much empathy to her character, and that’s when I truly started to understand Agnes’ need for absolute control. We learn the story of Stafford and Agnes’ first child, and the perils of what can happen when you attach so deeply and lose so much. Stafford and Agnes come to midlife riddled by guilt and shame, but we the readers are drawn into empathy.
And so, what can be said of balance? Will Stafford, the golden boy, teach us about the “golden mean” that holds the wisdom of living in the middle path? I started “Thumos” eagerly, wondering how Finn would address this idea. Clearly, the ability to feel deeply and take emotional risks in order to connect and experience life in its fullness is ideal, but it’s also reasonable to be emotionally and physically cautious to live well. Thumos (courage) is sometimes translated as spiritedness or fire, and it “bridges reason and appetite.” While I’ll leave the details off the page here, I felt emotionally satisfied by the ending, though perhaps the narrative was a bit too pat to be entirely realistic. Choosing the messy option in life—one that challenges us to leave our comfortable ruts and risk something emotionally to fight isolationism—can reap many rewards.
The Golden Boy is a novel that will satisfy with its engaging storytelling, excellent pacing, and clever writing. For that reason alone, I’d recommend it. It also delves into Aristotelian philosophy in a way that feels natural and allows the lay reader to learn about some basic philosophical concepts. The novel was an entertaining and enriching reading experience, and full of ideas that could bring insight to one’s own life.
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