Phillipp Meyer Novel - The Son -pb 2013 large softcover -$6 pickup Cleveland An epic journey spanning a century and a half in Texas, America. Eli McCullough was born in 1836, the year that the Republic of Texas was declared an independent state. He was the first child of this new republic. Eight years later he and his brother are kidnapped. They are left with nothing, barely their lives, whilst Eli watches his sister being raped and killed. Slowly he learns the ways and life of the Comanches as they battle to survive themselves against the incursions of the white settlers. But his progress within the tribe is matched by the tribes own perilous journey, as an epidemic endangers their future. Eli is forced to leave the tribe and pursue his life elsewhere. He falls in love has children and becomes a Ranger working for the Government, but finds it hard to break his Comanche memories and ways. He lives to be 100 and tells his remarkable story. Elis son Peter McCullough endures the First World War and several Mexican attacks. His diaries tell of momentous and dangerous times as he tries to maintain the dynasty begun by his father, now named the Colonel. At the age of eighty-six Jeanne Anne McCullough is the fifth richest woman in Texas, She has had a fall and is perilously close to death. She goes in and out of consciousness and tells her own history; battling to keep the family alive; battling to prevent the large-scale acquisitive oil companies from buying her land; battling to hold on to her largesse and her legacy. Three stories of one family combine to produce nothing less than a standout epic of and for our time. Read Caroline Baums Review: This books weighs in at just under a kilo making it a hefty doorstop. Following on from Meyers acclaimed debut American Rust, its also freighted with comparisons to the greats of Am Lit: Steinbeck, Hemingway, McCarthy. Its hard for a book to bear this double burden of expectation as well as its own bulk, especially when it is a second novel. But I am happy to say that The Son delivers mightily. It is a powerful evocation of the founding mythology of America, a blood-soaked two hundred year epic seen through the eyes of three characters who symbolise the brutality and greed that went into the forging of Texas. Lassooing his prose with masterly control, Meyer has a cinematic eye (think There Will be Blood meets The Proposition) and a poets ear. A prodigious achievement if one can get past the violence.
Posted on: Sat, 23 Aug 2014 07:49:25 +0000
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