Mothers and Sons

Mothers and Sons is like sonar in a lake, pinging out everything submerged, the hidden stories, shames and joys. There’s nothing like it. Haslett’s characters feel so real, their choices so hard, their lives so true. He is everything you want in a writer

Andrew Sean Greer

Mothers and Sons is both moving and deeply compelling, a story about the search for our own humanity, and the lengths we will go to maintain it. A new book by Adam Haslett is always cause for celebration. He is one of our very best writers

Ann Patchett

A family-in-crisis story that keenly captures deep-seated fears and regrets . . . Haslett’s sophisticated grasp of the ways that people over-police their feelings makes it a remarkably acute and effective character study . . . The strength of Haslett’s storytelling is its deliberation, slowly peeling back the veneers of Peter's and Ann’s professional accomplishments and cool public personas to reveal storms of guilt and fear

Kirkus (starred review)

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’

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

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

Haslett is skilled at examining the interior lives of characters in states of emotional extremis, whether they’re dealing with anxiety, depression, loneliness, or mental illness, or facing homophobia or violence . . . His ability to capture what it means to be human, in all its beauty, mundaneness, and ugliness, is what makes Haslett a standout

Publishers Weekly

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

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

Well-paced and elegantly written, Haslett’s latest is a haunting work

Minneapolis Star-Tribune

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

Mothers and Sons has a simple brilliance and charm, a subtle pull to delve deeper into the lives of [its] fraught characters and uncover the narratives we tell ourselves versus the truth. These are good people living ordinary lives, and it’s a pleasure to read about them

Chicago Review of Books

Mothers and Sons is Haslett’s best novel . . . he achieves new levels of moral depth and narrative push

New York Times Book Review

Haslett’s storytelling skill . . . is on quietly magnificent display . . . As much as both mother and son understand about the power of stories to harm and heal, they’ve failed to reckon with their own story, and the guilt and shame each has been carrying for decades. The momentum of the novel builds as long-held misunderstandings and resentments come to the surface, illuminating the meaning of what it means to be a mother, and a son, and culminating with a great sense of a weight lifted, of lightness and air

Boston Globe

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

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