Century's Son: A Novel - Softcover

Boswell, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312422318 ISBN 13: 9780312422318

Publisher: Picador, 2003

Synopsis

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 local state university, whose balance is about to be offset by the arrival of her famous father, a Russian political dissident-cum-American cultural critic who, among other things, claims to have had the chance to murder Stalin and now celebrates his hundredth birthday.

About this title

Review:

Within the confines of a Midwestern college town, Century's Son poignantly explores all that remains unsaid between family members still mourning the suicide of a teenage son. Robert Boswell's novel involves Zhenya Kamenev, a political science professor soured by the tragedy; her union-activist-turned-garbage-collector husband, Morgan, and his thug partner in trouble with the law; her daughter, who has never disclosed who fathered the son she had while a teenager; and Zhenya's father, Peter, who claims to be a century old and is a minor cultural figure since he was once armed and alone with Joseph Stalin, yet chose not to shoot.

Boswell's prose is straightforward and unadorned (which turns out to be a good thing). After a slightly flat beginning, the story is asserted and the novel builds steam. The characters are fallible, and their normalcy spirits this collection of personalities to express a range of emotions with authority. Take, for instance, what the family dog knew:

She had not forgotten Philip. Still she would catch a whiff of him or the things that smelled of him, and she would begin to pace the halls to find him. Anymore, after a few moments, she would stop herself. For a long time she had not known to stop herself, but she knew how to learn, as well as how to grieve.

Century's Son is a moving portrait of a family coping and in crisis, still, after so many years. --Michael Ferch

From the Inside Flap:

“A moving portrait of a family united and divided by a tragic loss, a subtle meditation on moral responsibility, and a slyly funny comedy of errors, Century’s Son is a heartbreaking, ultimately exhilarating novel by one of America’s finest writers.”
―Tom Perrotta, author of Election

“The texture of this replete portrayal of Middle America and its discontents suggests an inspired collaboration between Anne Tyler and John Cheever. Only a handful of Boswell’s contemporaries have written anything better than Century’s Son.”
―Kirkus Reviews
From Robert Boswell, one of America’s most acclaimed and gifted writers, the story of a Midwestern family riven and bound together by tragedy, love, and circumstance.

In the small college town of Hayden, Illinois, Morgan and Zhenya have settled into a loveless, stagnant marriage. He is a former labor organizer who now works as a garbage collector, and she is a political science professor and the daughter of a prominent Russian émigré. The suicide of their son, Philip, some ten years before has left the pair emotionally dead, lacking even the courage or initiative to separate from each other. Their surviving child, Emma, has become a teenage mother and refuses to reveal the identity of her child’s father.

Into this sullen mix marches the Century’s Son, Peter Ivanovich Kamenev, Zhenya’s exasperating father. A Russian writer and an impresario of history, Peter Ivanovich claims to have had the opportunity to assassinate Joseph Stalin, to have marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in the American South, and to have visited a strip club with Arkansas governor Bill Clinton. Unfortunately, Zhenya has discovered several inconsistencies in her father’s invented history, and she also discovers the limits of her patience with his neediness and self-dramatization.

Peter’s arrival, though it tears at the family, also re-juvenates it. He forces Morgan and Zhenya to confront themselves, their children alive and dead, and their lives past, present, and future, as lived, as planned, and as imagined. He embraces Emma and her child; he recognizes and exploits all of the small hypocrisies and foibles of daily life. His deceitful, smooth-talking vibrancy invigorates and infuriates everybody around him.

Intricate, beautifully observed, and delicately wrought, Century’s Son confirms Robert Boswell’s position as a peerless chronicler of domestic life.

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0312422318
• ISBN 13: 9780312422318
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320