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& Sons by David Gilbert

Literary fiction

& Sons

by David Gilbert

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Quick take

A prism through which Gilbert examines, well, everything: fathers & sons, husbands & wives, success & failure, aging & youth. It's bookended by death but there's a whole lot of life.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, 400

    400+ pages

  • Illustrated icon, Family_Drama

    Family drama

  • Illustrated icon, Cerebral

    Cerebral

  • Illustrated icon, NYC

    NYC

Why I love it

I bought & Sons by David Gilbert not long after it came out and it sat on my nightstand for about two years, taunting me. I somehow got it in my head that the book was long and forbidding (it was physically heavy) and I kind of semi-consciously started to view it as homework. I try to read these days for either pleasure or edification, but a mixture of the two is what I really seek. All of which is to say I was totally wrong about & Sons. It turned out to be a swift and gorgeous read, both nourishing and wildly entertaining.

& Sons centers around a spectacularly famous though reclusive older author named Andrew "A.N." Dyer, who is much more skilled as a writer than as a father. His coldness has left him adrift from his two older sons, Richard and Jamie, and in a late-in-life act of penance he attempts a do-over with his third son, seventeen-year-old Andy, the product of an affair that destroyed his marriage to Richard and Jamie's mother.

The book is topically narrow (literary New York) but thematically huge, the story a prism through which Gilbert examines, well, everything: fathers and sons, husbands and wives, success and failure, aging and youth. The book starts and ends with a funeral. It's bookended by death but in its pages there's a whole lot of life. Which is not to say life, or lives, well-lived. & Sons is populated by vividly drawn, well-meaning characters who can't quite say what they feel and manage to offend when their intention is the exact opposite.

My father (a man very much unlike the withholding patriarch at the center of this book) and I have an ongoing, amusing debate about narrative. He is often baffled/frustrated that fictitious characters make such bone-headed illogical decisions and screw up their lives so badly. My response is that no one wants to watch people make a series of good decisions. It's inherently undramatic. Drama is about conflict and obstacle and for those elements to be present, people have to screw up. I'm not even sure I entirely believe that all the time (functional, healthy people can be dramatically compelling) but the twists and turns of & Sons do illustrate my point.

Gilbert's prose is consistently startling; I found myself underlining passages every few pages. Some of my favorites: "Grace commanded the second pew, her whole family jammed together, the six of them sour and insistent, like the richest people flying coach." On Andy: "...this 17 percent boy with the zit goatee and the shaggy hair and the stubborn baby fat around his middle like he was halfway through digesting his younger softer self." A character described as "baseball handsome." Another: "She would make a fabulous stepmother someday."

Reading & Sons reminded me of the pleasures of literary fiction, of being granted access to a rarified, insular world populated by characters I didn't know I needed in my life until they were there. My acting teacher at NYU, Ron Van Lieu, used to urge his students to "expand your definitions of yourselves." This is what books are so uniquely good at – granting a backstage pass to experiences which are not our own. David Foster Wallace once said we're all marooned in our own skulls – a true, if depressing, statement. But books are the best remedy we have for this sorry state. I'm glad I'm not A.N. Dyer - or his sons - but I feel enlarged by having spent time in their company.

Member ratings (292)

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Literary fiction
View all
Intermezzo
The Book of George
Real Americans
Wellness
Margo’s Got Money Troubles
The God of the Woods
Same As It Ever Was
Annie Bot
Bear
Mercury
True Biz
Family Happiness
The Husbands
The Lady Waiting
The Other Valley
Hard by a Great Forest
Good Material
The Bullet Swallower
Happy All the Time
Alice Sadie Celine
Let Us Descend
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Shark Heart
Transcendent Kingdom
Hello Beautiful
Dominicana
What's Mine and Yours
The Unsettled
Ask Again, Yes
Vladimir
Infinite Country
The Prophets
Normal People
The Verifiers
Salvage the Bones
The Many Daughters of Afong Moy
I Have Some Questions for You
Black Buck
The History of Love
Age of Vice
Paper Names
The Light Pirate
The Secret History
The Kite Runner
Memorial
The Half Moon
Happiness Falls
The Gifted School
The Death of Vivek Oji
The Knockout Queen
Little Monsters
Yerba Buena
Beautiful World, Where Are You
Free Food for Millionaires
A Burning
The Mothers
The Water Dancer
Small Country
The Sympathizer
Fleishman Is in Trouble
Lot
An American Marriage
The Animators
The Mars Room
Exit West
White Fur
Woman No. 17
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
Eat Only When You're Hungry
Rainbirds
A Ladder to the Sky
Golden Child
The Goldfinch
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P
& Sons
The Association of Small Bombs
Lolly Willowes
All Grown Up
Marlena
Signal Fires
Someday, Maybe
Woman of Light
Marrying the Ketchups
The Shards