Book Log 2014 #22: & Sons by David Gilbert

I'm of two minds about this book, as while I appreciated the writing and the depiction of the the struggles sons often have establishing themselves outside of the ambit of their fathers, I never quite warmed to it. Not sure if I couldn't quite identify with the characters and their conflicts (my own relationship with my dad was much less problematic) or their place in the Manhattan of prep schools and upper classes, but I could never fully engage.

The book is narrated by the son of a life-long friend of A. N. Dyer, a Salingeresque author whose monogram is too cute by half given the title of the book. Like Salinger, Dyer wrote an influential novel while young (the title: Ampersand), whose success has colored his career and his personal life. We first see Dyer as he's preparing to give a eulogy for the narrator's father, who has recently died. Dyer is preoccupied with the whereabouts of his teenaged son, ostensibly the product of a dalliance with a Swedish nanny. Dyer sees in his youngest son a chance to succeed where he failed with his two older sons (who are contemporaries, if not exactly friends, of the narrator). That preoccupation leads Dyer to crash and burn with the eulogy, which then leads to the narrator moving in with Dyer (fortuitous as the narrator is without job and spouse given his own sexual indiscretions).

From there we get a story of Dyer trying to reconcile all of his sons, while the narrator's return into their lives leads him to learn more about his own father and the nature of his friendship with Dyer. There's probably more to say about that, but where I couldn't connect I found myself reading the book to appreciate the writing, and kind of let the story just kind of happen. So I'd say it's worth reading to at least see a well-crafted novel, and quite possibly to get more out of it than I did.