I always look forward to a new novel by Adam Haslett. I've been reading his fiction for years, and his latest novel, Mothers and Sons, like Imagine Me Gone (2016), and You Are Not a Stranger Here (2002), plumbs the history and secrets of family relationships.
Pleasure is the first and foremost quality I want a novel to provide, and Mothers and Sons provides not only the aesthetic pleasure of a well-crafted novel, but two point of view characters I quickly bonded with. Ann and Peter are the titular mother and son and the problem is Peter's long avoidance of his mother, Ann. There isn't any open hostility, but he doesn't visit and rarely calls, always citing work as his excuse.
The novel's structure amplifies this separation through shifts in point of view. Peter's first-person voice opens the story. It shifts to the close third when we move into a chapter from Ann's point of view. They have been estranged for so long it has become habitual even though they share many passions.
Ann used to be a minister. She lives with Clare, the woman who initiated her break with Peter's father. She and Clare have built a women's retreat center in Vermont where they offer supportive counseling to women who come for retreats. Peter is gay and single. He is a lawyer who represents asylum seekers in New York City. Like Ann, his life is intertwined with the lives of others, but unlike Ann, he is burdened with the frustrations and disappointments of a system that often delivers bad news. He has a casual relationship with a man he doesn't feel emotionally connected to, and since there is always more work than he has time for, he uses long hours at the office to solve his loneliness, writing reports that detail the traumas his clients suffered in their home countries. It is an occupation that effectively minimizes the comparably "safe" problems in his own life. It's abundantly clear that both Peter and Ann are compassionate people who have dedicated their lives to the welfare of others. So what is it that keeps Peter away, especially since his sister visits their mother frequently and tries to get Peter to join her?
The narrative builds towards the source of the problem with a slow, teasing pace that is entirely satisfying. And along the way, we encounter that sister, Liz, through both the mother and Peter. Liz is never a point of view character, and her exchanges with the other two are infrequent, but every time she appears on the page something very wonderful happens. She lacks the compassion of the other two, which means that she speaks her mind directly, no matter how irreverent, unfeeling, or out of place. She plays the role of the comedian and in that way balances the weighty concerns that burden both Peter and his mother. Liz is the leavening agent. Stretched between the other two, she makes the novel become not only a fiction about the causes of a troubled relationship between a mother and son, but a record of the different energies within the container of family. Liz provides the banter that gives the book its buoyancy.
How can a minor character have such power? It's in her dialogue. Her lines are delivered with unerring precision at exactly the wrong times. Here are two examples:
When Peter and Liz are in high school, their father dies. It's not long after their parents' divorce and everyone is feeling that chaos as well. Their father's family wants to transport his body back to his birthplace so that it can be buried there and Ann realizes she must ask the children if they want to have their father's grave accessible or if she should okay these plans. She asks the question in her usual, kind and empathetic manner. Haslett sets up the scene this way:
The next morning, for the first time since we were children, my mother made pancakes with all the fixings. Fresh fruit cut up in a bowl, warmed syrup, powdered sugar, freshly whipped cream. She didn't sit with us, though. She stood by the stove, watching.
Across the table, my sister heaped the bounty onto her plate. "Dad should have died more often," she said.
Ignoring Liz's provocation, my mother asked why I wasn't eating. Rather than answering her, I picked at a loose thread in the tablecloth.
"The question," my mother went on, "is whether you two want a place to visit, a gravestone and so on, somewhere nearby. Which you may well want, though who knows where you will be in the future."
"How about one of those mausoleum things?" Liz said. "Like a stone temple with a big black gate, and gargoyles" (249-250).
Liz takes great delight in tracking mud through Ann's careful preparations, and her delight delighted me.
Here's another one from an earlier chapter: The adult Peter has had a particularly grueling day and, at the end of it, he calls Liz simply to hear her voice. She has just returned from a visit with their mother.
"What are you—in the hospital?' she asks as soon as she picks up.
"No. Why?"
"This is the second time you've called me in a month. It's almost like we're siblings. I'm telling you, you missed a real party up at lesbian camp. They've installed an amazing sound system. Mom's become a dancing queen, it's all coke and hustlers now. Coke, hustlers, and knitwear" (126).
Liz's humor and disruptive energy doesn't blunt the novel's driving force. Instead, her levity adds a necessary tone to a story that might otherwise have felt monochromatic. Remarkably, the light Liz's presence brings to the page, the addition of a sibling who inhabits such a different tonal register, sets up a contrast with Peter and Ann that feels dramatic, helping me to understand the character I cared about most, bringing Peter into sharper focus. I always felt Liz in the background, even when Ann and Peter were alone together in the novel's spectacular final scene between the two of them, two forces drilling down, finally, to reach the trouble. Liz is the invisible cheerleader, urging them to duke it out.
Haslett, Adam. Mothers and Sons. New York: Little Brown, 2025.
Filed under: Writing about a sibling relationship