Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for this Advanced Readers Copy of Mothers and Sons by Adam Haslett!

Mothers and Sons was an excellent read. I loved the writing and it was propulsive. Great character study. I would read more from this author.

This is definitely a slow burn. Told from alternating points of view from Peter and his mother, watching Peter's downward spiral was heartbreaking because the reader is living it.
The novel is also a social commentary on our broken immigration system and those who get trapped in the paperwork and court system.
Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced copy.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for providing me with an advance e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review. Look for it now in your local and online bookstores and libraries.

I found this story to be a bit disjointed and couldn’t get completely engrossed in this one. The description was a bit misleading.

It turned around by the end, but I wanted it to be more.

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC of Mothers and Sons by Adam Haslett.

There was a lot to appreciate about this book. I especially liked getting a glimpse into what the life of an immigration attorney would look like. Exhausting, hopeless, numbing. To hear tragic stories, day in and out. And for the protagonist to then go and fill the numbness with occasional, casual romantic encounters, there was definitely a feeling of bleakness to be felt for main character.

What I couldn't really get into was his relationship with his mother, or how they lost each other in the first place. It almost felt more an issue of complacency and being too busy and overwhelmed to reach out. I could never really get into his mom's alternative living situation, it seemed very commune/polyamorous-like, and something about it felt culty and turned me off.

In short, I appreciated the idea, I just couldn't get into the execution.

After reading the first chapter of this novel, I couldn’t understand how anyone chose to read on. There wasn’t anything intriguing about it. It was bland; the prologue captured my interest, but the next section of words took it away. It was bland.

I was intrigued by the premise of this book but unfortunately I was expecting one thing from the synopsis and title and the story delivered something totally different.

Mothers and Sons promised to be a story about a gay immigration lawyer unable to emotionally connect with his lover who is still troubled by the loss of his first love, who is estranged from his mother, a gay female minister who runs a progressive religious retreat in Vermont.

I thought it was going to be a moving literary story full of interiority about a man representing a sexual orientation case as he reconciles with his mother.

Instead they seemed to operate two completely separate orbits as they were uninteresting, self-absorbed workaholics who each found their only fulfillment in their jobs to the detriment of their relationships, with a reconciliation scene at the end. The first half of the book was very slow and went into a mundane deep dive on the day to day practice of being a lawyer (though the duties described were more paralegal work - lawyers don't format footnotes!) and as I am a legal assistant for a day job, I quickly became bored without any emotional dimension. It was interesting to see the day to day life of an immigration lawyer, but it was portrayed in such a sterile way that I felt like I was at work. Accurate, sure, but not engaging, unless you don't know the legal profession at all and think the procedural nitty gritty is glamorous.

Mother and son barely reflected on their relationship and I felt like I didn't care to know their history after awhile because I developed such a strong dislike to each of them. It was well-written with very blunt prose; I just was not the right reader for this book at all. It was like a series of bare-bones portraits about unlikable and dysfunctional mothers and sons without much reflection or deeper themes or transformation.

I then skimmed the last half of the book because I got so bored with the story.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance review copy. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Peter's an asylum lawyer in NYC and his life is all wrapped up in his job. We quickly learn that he's gay, has very few relationships outside of work, and is estranged from his mother -- all elements to make for an interesting novel on its own. A new client, a young man from Albania, brings Peter back to his youth and a life altering event he's buried, and his story becomes even more interesting.
While I immediately was immersed in Peter's stories of his clients trying to escape the horrors of their pasts, it takes a while for his own story to unfold. There were two elements of this novel that were especially unique. There are many novels about lawyers, but immigration law isn't typically the specialty that's featured. This is an especially timely focus and the clients' stories are interesting, and also disturbing in many cases. There are also lots of novels about the mother/daughter relationship but not as many about mothers and sons. Mr. Haslett's writing is beautiful and I especially liked his hauntingly written introduction.
Thanks to Netgalley and Little, Brown and Company for the opportunity to read Mothers and Sons. I received a complimentary copy of this book and opinions expressed are completely my own.

Delighted to include this title in the January edition of Novel Encounters, my column highlighting the month’s most anticipated fiction for the Books section of Zoomer, Canada’s national lifestyle and culture magazine. (see column and mini-review at link)

Another great novel to start the year off and one that could not be more timely. It's a novel about a gay lawyer Peter who represents asylum seekers and who has a mom who is a lesbian and runs a woman's center. They have been estranged from each other due to an incident when Peter was younger. I don't mean to give too much away but how the author takes those points and layers into a compelling story is what makes this novel so great and not something that could have easyly become a pretentious novel. Relationships between gay men and their mothers is something that can be wonderful, cruel, or distant. Trust me as a gay man I know. The title is perfect because our mothers are the closest thing we have as proetction from a cruel wordl. If our father's accept it's great and if thye don't it can be traumatic. So our mothers are the only hope we have growing up. We rely on them or we have to look elsewhere. So at the point in the novel where that bond is broken it haunts Peter. I obviusly won't tell you how it ends but just know you'll be thinking about this novel days after you've read it. Thank you to Little Brown and Netgally for the ARC. Read it!!

MOTHERS AND SONS is the newest addition to Adam Haslett’s writing that offers up feelings of secrets, abandonment and what might have been.

Peter Fischer is an immigration asylum lawyer, estranged from his mother for twenty years after an act of violence ended a relationship that could have been. His mother, Ann, along with two others, Claire and Roberta, operate a women’s retreat center. And while his mother is content with where her life has taken her, Peter is in an ever revolving Groundhog Day situation of work, home and occasional hookups with a man who wants more from Peter that he is either unwilling or unable to give. As mother and son move through their lives, the ever present memories linger.

I found this to be a novel of facing the past, learning forgiveness and moving forward. I did find a tear or two rolling down my cheek. The only problem I had was that there was quite a bit of foreign language. Too much for me anyway and at times it was distracting. I would be interested to see if this is in the author’s other works.

Thank you to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for this ARC opportunity. All opinions are my own and given voluntarily.

Imagine me gone was one of the best books I’ve read and I was excited to receive the arc of this long anticipated follow-up. Mothers and sons is the story of Peter, a gay immigration lawyer who has a strained relationship with his sister, Liz and their mother, Ann. Through trying to help
An undocumented immigrant, vasal, Peter begins to question his own concepts of family and his relationships. An incident occurred when Peter was 15 that set the course of his life in motion and helps explain the distance between him and his mother. Peter spends the rest of his adult life running from the incident and his family, but has he reached the point where it’s time to face the past?

Told in 3 parts (Peter’s first person present day, Ann’s past through an omniscient narrator, and the incident 25 years ago), the story is driven by Peter and Ann. Like imagine me gone, the novel is about family and relationships and the prose is seamless and beautiful. I admit that for some reason the shifts in time and pov was jarring to me, but in retrospect, it is necessary for this novel and adds to the understanding of Peter and Ann. Not as good as imagine me gone, but a worthy follow- up.

Thanks to the publisher for the arc via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for gifting me a digital ARC of the latest by Adam Haslett. All opinions expressed in this review are my own - 4 stars!

Peter is an asylum lawyer in New York City, overworked and isolated. He spends his days immersed in the struggles of his clients only to return to an empty apartment and occasional hook-ups. But when the asylum case of a young gay man pierces Peter's numbness, the event that he has avoided for twenty years returns to haunt him. Peter is mostly estranged from his mother, Ann, who runs a women's retreat center she founded after leaving his father. The secret that both mother and son share is the one that they can't talk about and has torn them apart.

The story plays out in the present, alternating between Peter and Ann, as well as gradually revealing the past incident that has caused their rift. It's interesting to see how these family dynamics played out - and there were a lot of issues in this family. Even though Ann spent her life listening to people's problems, she often failed at that in her own life. This looks at how traumatic events carry over in our lives, especially when they are hidden. There were a lot of heartbreaking immigration stories, highlighting this issue, I did feel that they tended to slow the book down, especially in the beginning, but the last part of the book tied everything together perfectly and kept me glued.

3.5

“You can’t protect weakness. It only invites people to harm you.”

Thank you to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for the ARC.

I had heard great things about Adam Haslett and his books, so I decided to request this ARC when I was looking for my next ARC reads on NetGalley. While the writing is absolutely beautiful and the story at times can be intriguing, I found this book rather dull.

The two main characters were not likeable, and their stories fell short, which is a shame since a rather large part of the books is about a mother and a son who had become estranged due to a crime that had occurred years before. The son is an immigration lawyer, and I loved when he interviewed his clients and the stories they shared about their past in a country where crime and homophobia was a regular, run of the mill occurrence. The stories they told were hard to read so definitely be mindful of trigger warnings.

About 70 percent of the book was rather slow paced, while the rest was not. I was hoping the reconciliation of the mother and son would be more gut wrenching and beautiful, but it was not as satisfactory as I had hoped.

Overall, I believe this book could have had more heart and more emotional moments for the mother and son.

There is always a dance between the truth and self-justification, between what happened and what we tell ourselves. This dance is at the center of *Mothers and Sons,* Adam Haslett’s new novel. This one is for you if you have grappled with personal history and family relationships. And it marks an impressive start to my 2025 reading - as it is a powerful and thoughtful piece of literary fiction.

*Mothers and Sons* focuses on Peter, a gay asylum lawyer, and his estranged mother Ann, a co-founder of a women's retreat. Through their interweaving narratives, Haslett examines how we construct stories about ourselves and our past—sometimes to heal, sometimes to hide, and sometimes to justify. The novel's genius lies in how it reveals how these personal narratives can simultaneously illuminate and obscure the truth, much like holding a flashlight in a dark room: what we choose to illuminate often leaves other areas in shadow.

The prose is precise and evocative, never wasting a word. Late in the novel, it dawned on me that Peter’s professional work—helping asylum seekers craft their narratives to justify their stay in America—is similar to his personal struggle to understand his own story. Meanwhile, Ann's role as a source of healing for other women while struggling to connect with her son creates a poignant tension that drives the narrative forward. I found myself more drawn to the chapters featuring Peter than Ann, but perhaps that is my own bias shining through.

This book will resonate with readers who appreciate nuanced family dramas, those interested in the psychology of relationships, and anyone who has ever struggled to bridge the gap between their own perspective and that of a family member. It's also an important addition to the canon of LGBTQ+ literature, though its universal themes of connection, understanding, and self-discovery transcend any single categorization. I found myself thinking about Hollinghurt’s *Our Evenings*, Rapp’s *Wolf at the Table* and Attenberg’s *A Reason to See You Again". I suppose I have a thing for family dramas since they help me understand my own experiences, or at least provide catharsis to process what I've been through.

Bottom Line: This novel not only entertains but also serves as a lesson about our own tendencies to shape and reshape our personal histories. It is an excellent choice to begin the reading year with.

This is my first book by Adam Haslett's and while I think the writing is superb, I could not find a way to connect with the characters. I'm fascinated by the relationships between sons and their mothers, and sadly, this book didn't capture my interest as I hoped it would.

I'm grateful to NetGalley and Little, Brown for the opportunity to read an ARC Mothers and Sons.

Quiet, thoughtful, and revelatory. Adam Haslett is a master, and his prose in Mothers and Sons made me want to break out a highlighter on every page. While the coming out story is well worn at this point, I thought this particular examination offered so much more, and beautifully. The flashbacks that reveal what happened between Peter and Jared were especially moving to me, and I really loved the way Haslett handled "the secret" at the book's core without being flashy.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the opportunity to read this one in advance of its publication. I loved this book so much that I ordered a finished copy, too.

In Pulitzer finalist Haslett’s first novel in nearly a decade, he focuses on two characters: Peter Fischer and his estranged mother, Ann. Peter, a 40 year old gay man, is going through the motions as an immigration attorney and is barely engaged in even the most casual of relationships. When he is assigned to the case of Vasal Marku, an Albanian asylum seeker whose own sexuality placed him in jeopardy in his country, Peter is concerned that he has become attracted to his client: “That all my efforts on his behalf have been a disguise for appetite. A means to draw him to me.” Marku reawakens Peter’s memories of a high school crush that he had on Jared Hanlan, a popular young man whom everyone saw as “beautiful.” Even Hanlan’s chic mother recognized her son’s charisma, his ability to make friends, and his “inability to stick around.”

Peter’s mother, Ann, was a minister at an Episcopal congregation in Longfield, Massachusetts. When her children were teenagers, she left her husband who idealized her, gave up the priesthood and the rectory where she had raised her family, and created a community with her lover, Clare, and their friend, Roberta, in the hillside of Vermont near the Canadian border. Viriditas was a “ministry of hospitality” a place for woman to talk amongst themselves. “To the kids, Clare would always be the woman who’d bullied her way in when they least wanted anyone else around. And Ann had done little to help the situation.” But to the visitors to Viriditas, Ann and Clare were the model couple who gave up a conventional life and became conscious partners.

Haslett writes a beautiful sentence, but Peter’s life is not particularly riveting, and we do not get to the central conflict until three quarters into the novel. If a reader can perservere, the payoff at the conclusion of the novel is heartbreaking and hopeful. Thank you Little, Brown & Company and Net Galley for an advanced copy of this tale of familial trauma.

This was the first book by this author that I had read and I am now motivated to go back to his earlier works. There are plenty of mothers and sons here. The central pair, Ann and Peter, have been estranged since a tragic event that took place when Peter was in high school and Ann was in the process of leaving the ministry, beginning a relationship with another woman, and caring for her dying husband. This moment is beyond freighted--maybe a bit too much going on--and the emotions from that time take a good twenty-five years to work out. In the present, Peter is a gay, overworked asylum lawyer in New York City who buries his past and keeps his emotions at bay until he takes on a young gay Albanian client, Vasel, whose own challenges and Peter's growing obsession with him, cause Peter to spiral. Ann has moved with her lover to northern Vermont to open a women's retreat center. Meanwhile, her daughter Liz, a wild child, has somehow found the most traditional family with her husband and her own young son.

There are three other mother/son relationships here as well. One of Peter's clients is fighting deportation in part to protect her struggling son. Vasel's mother saves his life in Albania when he is outed and spirits him out of the country. Finally, Jared, Peter's high school crush and his mother, who both seem perfect and beautiful to Peter's young eyes, are both more complex.

The thematic link here is mothers saving their sons. Another theme is how people you think you know can act and react in ways that shake up your preconceptions. A third theme is violence, both historical and familial--how we acknowledge it and how we move beyond it.

The book is well-written, nicely-paced, and very moving with lovely descriptions of rural Vermont and, referencing Hart Crane, the Brooklyn Bridge. I think, ultimately, the book is a about making and finding peace--between mothers and sons and between the past and the present.