Only Son
About the book
Author: Kevin Moffett
Publisher: McSweeney’s
More info:
The StoryGraph | Goodreads
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the review.
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Bookshop.org (ebook) | Buy it in print directly from McSweeney’s
My review
Only Son was a dark horse of a National Book Award nominee; it was published by McSweeneys (a very small indie publisher) and I don’t think many people were aware of it before its nomination. What a travesty it would have been if this book had passed unnoticed by the masses!
This is a beautiful novel in vignettes that explores the way grief stays with you as you age, and the ways the loss of a father at an early age can impact a man as he becomes a father himself. The prose is the kind that switches between making you laugh and taking your breath away; I dog-eared several pages to save passages forever. For example:
Sometimes I can summon his voice: a thin, distant rasp. One hand grenade could kill us all… he'd say when people were standing too close. Go look for me in the other room… when I was annoying him. Childhood is a song you hear so many times you stop listening to the words. Let us cross the river and rest under the shade of the trees. Probably half the things my father said to me he never said to me.
At the end of the day, though, I felt a bit like this book slipped through my brain like water. I’m left with more of an impression of beauty than any exact details. Still, I’m very glad I read it.
Content and trigger warnings
Death of a parent
