Mothers and Sons

How well do you know your mother? How well does your mother know you? In his acclaimed debut novel,The Baker, Paul Hond presented an ambitious and deeply compassionate portrait of race and redemption in urban America. Now, in his long-awaited second novel, Hond offers a wise and moving variation on one of literature’s essential themes–the complicated and often unarticulated relationship between mothers and sons. At twenty-seven, Moss Messinger, a sometime restaurant...
More Description

How well do you know your mother? How well does your mother know you? In his acclaimed debut novel,The Baker, Paul Hond presented an ambitious and deeply compassionate portrait of race and redemption in urban America. Now, in his long-awaited second novel, Hond offers a wise and moving variation on one of literature’s essential themes–the complicated and often unarticulated relationship between mothers and sons. At twenty-seven, Moss Messinger, a sometime restaurant critic with a dwindling bank account, had hoped he might be over his childhood. Moss grew up with his distant single mother, a musician, in their rent-controlled two-bedroom Manhattan apartment. Nina lived in a haze of music and men that Moss was never able to pierce. Having a baby at seventeen had completely changed Nina’s life–and she’d tried to change it back ever since. When her son was a teenager, she left on a jazz-fueled tour of Europe, and Moss was never able to forgive her. Through the years, there had been a kind of hostility between them, though the tenderness that passes between mothers and sons lay beneath it. Now their emotional distance is matched by the geographical distance–Nina is in L.A., Moss is in New York–and exacerbated by Nina’s new husband, whom Moss has never met. Yet when Moss breaks up with his longtime girlfriend and sinks into depression, Nina flies back east to be by his side–not altogether unselfishly, as it also allows her a respite from a troubled marriage. But the reunion triggers a series of shocking events that force mother and son to confront and understand each other in new and unusual ways. Psychologically rich and acutely observed,Mothers and Sonsis an intricate portrait of a complex and fascinating familial relationship, one that is both sensitively rendered and urbanely wry. Drawing on a literary tradition ranging from D. H. Lawrence to Philip Roth, Paul Hond writes with dexterity and insight about fractured lives, the long shadow of resentments, and the rebirth of love and family.