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Century's Son: A Novel
Century’s Son is a piercing and visionary novel that explores the surprisingly diverse lives of one midwestern American family. In the years following the suicide of their teenaged son, husband and wife Morgan and Zhenya have settled into a staid and loveless marriage. Morgan is a one-time union leader who is now happy as a simple garbageman; Zhenya is a professor at the l...more
Paperback, 320 pages
Published
July 1st 2003
by Picador
(first published 2002)
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Peopled by a set of wonderful characters: a married couple--he, a garbage man; she, a political science professor at a university in an Illinois college town; their 20-year-old daughter & her 6-year-old son; the wife's eccentric elderly father (the "century's son"), who claims to have lived the entire 20th century & witnessed many of its key events, including an opportunity to assassinate Stalin; and a number of other richly portrayed lesser characters. The couple's son, then 12, committ...more
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A compelling portrait of a family divided and united by loss. The family members are both ordinary and exotic. Their moral dilemmas are navigated with grace, ambiguity and humor. Robert Boswell moves events along at a thoughtful pace; his characters are nuanced and memorable. He turns a phrase nicely, too:
"Wisdom that fit into a lunch box, that was what the public wanted. Here and everywhere. Americans were no more shallow than any other people, just more pampered, so they had come to treasure t...more
"Wisdom that fit into a lunch box, that was what the public wanted. Here and everywhere. Americans were no more shallow than any other people, just more pampered, so they had come to treasure t...more
I took my time reading this one. I'm not sure why. It's well written and for the most part enjoyable. I think at times Boswell loses focus, but he's handling the POVs of numerous characters and that can tend to pull a story in unexpected directions. Still, an engaging tale of a family dealing with the death of a son. Worth you time.
The depth of emotional underpinnings, the increasing levies of misunderstanding, as well as certain details (Morgan's faceprint in Zhenya's dress, "as if it had leaked out of her," was a detail I've been chewing on for some time now since I've finished the novel), all make this a wonderful novel.
Boz. Wow. You read something like this, and it's so tight, so pulled together, that you despair of ever being able to write anything worth a damn. Read it.
the boz is a great writer and teacher
Jun 06, 2013
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Robert Boswell is the author of eleven books, including The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards, a story collection with Graywolf Press, in April 2009. His novels: Century's Son, American Owned Love, Mystery Ride, The Geography of Desire, and Crooked Hearts. His other story collections: Living to Be 100 and Dancing in the Movies. His nonfiction: The Half-Known World, a book on the craft of writing,...more
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