Mothers and Sons

Reviews / Votes

A complex portrait of parallel lives on a par with the great Russian novels . . . incandescently smart and elegant . . . This is a story that feels as deep and real as life itself - a beautiful portrait of a mother and son * Guardian * The novel I've looked forward to most this coming year: Adam Haslett's Mothers and Sons . . . I've loved his writing since Union Atlantic and this book is his best yet . . . The echoes of the Russian greats in the title aren't misplaced - this is an epic family saga that packs an extraordinary emotional punch * Observer, 'Fiction to look out for in 2025' * A rising American superstar . . . Mothers and Sons packs a powerful punch which will secure [Haslett's] reputation . . . What Haslett does especially well is excavate the emotional inner lives of his characters . . . The final third of the book has the pace and revelation of a thriller. Ann may believe that "history is a mess" but Haslett shows quite brilliantly how the past can deliver blows decades on, and that sometimes a step backwards is what it takes to be properly in the present * Big Issue * Subtle, symphonic and satisfying . . . the secrets are deep and rich . . . Haslett wears his novelists skills lightly, never overwhelming the reader with a forceful style, but dropping in distinctive observations nonetheless * Financial Times * Riveting . . . Unfurling across multiple timelines with impressive, confident fluidity, Mothers and Sons is a powerful study of the impossibility of trying to hold back the tides of familial hurt and trauma. When the levee finally breaks, the outcome is both heartbreaking and ultimately hopeful * Vogue * Mothers and Sons is Haslett's best novel . . . he achieves new levels of moral depth and narrative push * New York Times Book Review * One of the most psychologically astute fiction writers in America . . . Mothers and Sons could not be more timely . . .There's a strange tension in Haslett's work between urgency and introspection. Try as you might, you cannot rush this novel . . . His prose lies on the page with the intensity of a loosely coiled copperhead; you don't even see the camouflaged danger until it strikes. He's a master of incident and particularly of the ordinary line that's transformed by his pacing and placement into something altogether devastating * Washington Post * There's no better writer at chronicling the highs and lows of familial love. In Mothers and Sons, Haslett shows a family both torn by past trauma and battered by the social turmoil of the present . . . The chronicle of this complex mother and son pair satisfies one of the best reasons to read fiction: to understand others and their impossible burdens, to mourn when they stumble and celebrate when they survive * Los Angeles Times * This beautifully written novel about the power of stories to redeem the past and reclaim the future is itself a tapestry of such narratives * O, The Oprah Magazine * Excellent . . . Haslett sets up this story with a delicacy that will not surprise anyone who read his beautiful 2016 novel, Imagine Me Gone, which featured a fretful, caretaking mother and her manic-depressive son. He is particularly good at depicting the ways-often admirable, sometimes blinding-that both Ann and Peter have been shaped by their work * Wall Street Journal *