Mothers and Sons

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’

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

Haslett’s storytelling skill . . . is on quietly magnificent display . . . As much as both mother and son understand about the power of stories to harm and heal, they’ve failed to reckon with their own story, and the guilt and shame each has been carrying for decades. The momentum of the novel builds as long-held misunderstandings and resentments come to the surface, illuminating the meaning of what it means to be a mother, and a son, and culminating with a great sense of a weight lifted, of lightness and air

Boston Globe