bren
Member
When Walter Mosely writes mysteries, they're riveting, ringing with cool characters, dialogue, and plot. When he's writing a novel - a more serious voice takes over. The events may carry more tragedy, as the wheel turns on the innocent and the good.
In his novel, The Fortunate Son, a young, abandoned black woman whose only child is an ICU-bound infant boy, becomes involved with a needy widower/surgeon who also has an infant son. They, together with his vietnamese nanny, become a close family, their needs and abilities intertwining into a kinship which, in spite of a sightless cruel system and all-too-human self doubt - manage to keep a bead on one another despite separation, death and destruction.
The two boys have a particular relationship, their opposing natures seeming to fill in the gaps, one for the other. Thomas, sickly, weak, off-putting, observant; Eric, healthy, charming, intelligent, assertive, they stick together, and help each other out. When fate intervenes and each must go his own way, it's the paths of these two lives that form the main body of the book.
Mosely's characters are deeply drawn and set onto one another so their actions bloom perfectly, in ways I could never have predicted. I was stunned into gaping incredulity at the sublime resilience displayed where it's least expected, by the intelligence and strength of characters and novelist.
This novel needs an "18" warning for sex, violence, and violent sex. Some scenes are uncomfortable, meant, I believe, to expose the gamut and are counterpoint to an overarching tenderness throughout.
In his novel, The Fortunate Son, a young, abandoned black woman whose only child is an ICU-bound infant boy, becomes involved with a needy widower/surgeon who also has an infant son. They, together with his vietnamese nanny, become a close family, their needs and abilities intertwining into a kinship which, in spite of a sightless cruel system and all-too-human self doubt - manage to keep a bead on one another despite separation, death and destruction.
The two boys have a particular relationship, their opposing natures seeming to fill in the gaps, one for the other. Thomas, sickly, weak, off-putting, observant; Eric, healthy, charming, intelligent, assertive, they stick together, and help each other out. When fate intervenes and each must go his own way, it's the paths of these two lives that form the main body of the book.
Mosely's characters are deeply drawn and set onto one another so their actions bloom perfectly, in ways I could never have predicted. I was stunned into gaping incredulity at the sublime resilience displayed where it's least expected, by the intelligence and strength of characters and novelist.
This novel needs an "18" warning for sex, violence, and violent sex. Some scenes are uncomfortable, meant, I believe, to expose the gamut and are counterpoint to an overarching tenderness throughout.