Dreary do-gooders. A mother who runs a women's retreat center in Vermont; a year-old son who represents asylum seekers and lives alone in a studio apartment in Brooklyn where the air is redolent of depression and earnestness. These are not the kind of fictional characters I'd ordinarily want to usher the new year in with; but Adam Haslett gives me little choice. His latest novel, Mothers and Sons, is too beautifully written to pass over; too smart about how secrets feed on time, perversely taking up more room in our lives as the years go by.
We first meet Peter Fischer, the adult lawyer son, in the midst of one of his overwhelming work days. His job, as Peter ruefully sees it, is to force his clients β people who've experienced violence in other countries β to "go over and over the worst thing that ever happened to them Peter then shapes their harrowing and often convoluted stories into a narrative that will, hopefully, persuade a judge to grant them asylum.
A gay man, Peter limits himself to sporadic hookups that don't interfere with his work, work, work. Occasionally, Peter finds himself thinking back to a question he was asked by an older lawyer at his long ago job interview:. Peter didn't know then β and doesn't know now β what the value of his work is in the big picture of things. That is, until a new client β a year-old gay Albanian man seeking asylum on the grounds of his sexual orientation β pushes Peter into a crisis.
While meeting with him, Peter feels a sudden "deep fatigue Peter subsequently locks himself out of his apartment, twice, and experiences vertigo. A memory is forcing its way to the surface that impels Peter to contact his mother, Ann.
She's the woman who runs that retreat center. Ann and Peter have been quietly distanced for decades ever since she left Peter's father for her current partner, a woman.
