The Son by Phillip Meyer

There was tremendous buzz about this novel, published on 2013, and most of it included the words "epic" and "Great American Novel" and "sweeping multi-generational family saga" and so on.  I was excited to finally pick it up and get into this past summer.  While it certainly is a sweeping epic tale of a Texan family from the early 1800s to the present day,  it could never be classified as a great novel in this reader's opinion.  Many critics seem to have a soft spot for sprawling tales set in the West; maybe that partially explains their euphoria.

Interestingly, after completing the novel, and wondering why I had such a different opinion of the novel as the critics had published, I went back to several of the reviews and skimmed through the "Comments" sections and found many other readers agreed with me: an overall disappointing read.  It wasn't a horrible book, by any means, but for some of us, it just didn't live up to the hype.  

I found the narrative structure of The Son to be just too demanding of the reader.  I should not have had to flip back and forth to the family tree in the front of the book nearly as many times as I did.  By the time I had a firm grasp on the relationships of the three main characters, I didn't much care about them anymore.  The increasingly popular trend toward chronology-shuffling and multiple narrators can be done well, but often I find it too distracting and demanding.  Believe me when I say I generally throw myself into a story and give it my all, but it has to feel way more inviting than this one did.  I also found the prose too flowery and too strained.  The Son read like it was hard WORK to write; after awhile, it was hard work to read, as well! 

The author certainly has a good story to tell: young Eli McCullough, the young son of a Texas rancher in the 1800s is kidnapped and raised by Comanche Indians.  Released as a young man, Eli goes on to make a fortune in the cattle business.  His time with the Comanches, told in flashbacks  throughout the story by Eli on his 100th birthday, makes up the most interesting part of the story.  Within Eli's lifetime, the Comanches and white settlers visit tremendous violence upon each other, all described quite graphically. The "sprawling saga" continues with ever-shifting narratives by Eli's son, Peter, and Eli's great-granddaughter,  Jeanne.  The violence continues during Peter's life, only this time it's Texans brutally murdering their Mexican neighbors and grabbing their land.  Generations later, Jeanne, who has become a fantastically wealthy and much-maligned  oil baron (baroness?) was poorly drawn by the author (as other readers commented) and frankly, I couldn't wait for to succumb to the slowest-moving fire ever!! Yikes, did I just say that? Yes; yes, I did. 

“Toshaway had been right: you had to love others more than you loved your own body, otherwise you would be destroyed, whether from the inside or out, it didn't matter. You could butcher and pillage but as long as you did it for people you loved, it never mattered.” 

Really??

My rating **