The Son by Philipp Meyer Review Book Review

The Son has been on my reading list for a while, it took a back seat while I was under a time crunch to finish  Brick Lane before our trip to London in November and The Orphan Master's Son for book club (which we just recently discussed... finally!).  I picked this one up just before the holidays and finished just after, with some concentrated time around New Year's to polish it off.  This happened to be the first book I finished in 2014 (perhaps the only at this point... ).

Synopsis: click here for Amazon's synopsis.

The Son is indeed a family saga spanning many generations.  I read this on my kindle and as a result, missed the schematic of the family tree in the beginning.  This left me to piece together the family tree in my own head, which turned out to be fun.  It took somewhere between 20 - 30% to piece it together.  There was only one relationship I misunderstood, which would have brought greater clarity had I known while I was reading, but I enjoyed rethinking through the course of events after learning the true relationship.

In the beginning, the story lines I thought I would be least interested in, turned out to be some of the more interesting ones in the end.  While it took almost 20% of the book to pick up, once it did, it kept going.  The chapters are structured such that they move backwards and forwards in time depending on the character of focus of the chapter.  At times this could be difficult to keep up with, especially in the beginning when I was a bit impatient and kept asking myself, well what the heck does Jeannie have to do with Eli, where do these darn characters connect. Once the connections were established it became more interesting to read character development one chapter at at time in this disjointed sort of manner.

Unfortunately I took too long to write this review and I'm having trouble recalling much more about this book.  While I enjoyed it and was able to finish it, it's not the great American novel its been touted as by other reviewers.  It's a good book and a good read if you're looking for something new, but not a must read.  I wouldn't bump anything off your reading list for this one.

Happy Reading!