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Mothers and Sons
- Author
- Adam Haslett
- Narrator
- Andrew Gibson, Janet Metzger
- Publisher
- Penguin Books Ltd
- Publish Date
- 6 February 2025
- Run Time
- 10 hours 57 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
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What to expect
Brought to you by Penguin.
A mother and son, estranged for many years, reckon at last with the secret that has kept them apart in this highly anticipated novel by one of the most talented American writers of his generation
At forty, Peter, an asylum lawyer in New York City, is overworked and isolated. He spends his days immersed in the struggles of immigrants only to return to an empty apartment and occasional hook-ups with a man who wants more than Peter can give. But when the asylum case of a young gay man pierces Peter's numbness, the event that he has avoided for twenty years returns to haunt him.
Ann, his mother, who runs a women's retreat centre she founded after leaving his father, is wounded by the estrangement from Peter but cherishes the world she has built. She long ago banished from her mind the decision that divided her from her son. But as Peter’s case plunges him further into the fraught memory of his first love and the night of violence that changed his life forever, he and his mother must confront the secret that tore them apart.
With unsurpassed emotional depth, Mothers and Sons reveals all that is lost by looking away from the past and the love that might be restored by facing it. In his spellbinding new novel, Adam Haslett demonstrates yet again his mastery of “a rich assortment of literary gifts” (New York Times).
‘Haslett has a great gift for capturing the strikingly different inner worlds of his characters and rendering them in beautiful prose’ Guardian
© Adam Haslett 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025
Critics Review
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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
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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’
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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
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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
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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
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Mothers and Sons is Haslett’s best novel . . . he achieves new levels of moral depth and narrative push
New York Times Book Review
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Details
- Author
- Adam Haslett
- Narrator
- Andrew Gibson, Janet Metzger
- Duration
- 10 hours 57 minutes
- Release Date
- 6 February 2025
- ISBN
- 9781405981583
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Penguin Books Ltd
- Genre
- Modern and contemporary fiction: literary and general, Family life fiction / Stories about family, Narrative theme: love / relationships, Narrative theme: identity / belonging, Narrative theme: displacement, exile, migration
Synopsis
Brought to you by Penguin.A mother and son, estranged for many years, reckon at last with the secret that has kept them apart in this highly anticipated novel by one of the most talented American writers of his generationAt forty, Peter, an asylum lawyer in New York City, is overworked and isolated. He spends his days immersed in the struggles of immigrants only to return to an empty apartment and occasional hook-ups with a man who wants more than Peter can give. But when the asylum case of a young gay man pierces Peter's numbness, the event that he has avoided for twenty years returns to haunt him.Ann, his mother, who runs a women's retreat centre she founded after leaving his father, is wounded by the estrangement from Peter but cherishes the world she has built. She long ago banished from her mind the decision that divided her from her son. But as Peter’s case plunges him further into the fraught memory of his first love and the night of violence that changed his life forever, he and his mother must confront the secret that tore them apart.With unsurpassed emotional depth, Mothers and Sons reveals all that is lost by looking away from the past and the love that might be restored by facing it. In his spellbinding new novel, Adam Haslett demonstrates yet again his mastery of “a rich assortment of literary gifts” (New York Times).‘Haslett has a great gift for capturing the strikingly different inner worlds of his characters and rendering them in beautiful prose’ Guardian© Adam Haslett 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025
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