The Gilmore Guide to Books

Connecting Books and Readers One Review at a Time

  • Home
  • About Me
  • Reviews
    • Reviews by Author
    • Reviews by Title
    • Reviews by Genre
  • Podcast
  • Policies
    • Review Policy
    • Cookie Policy
    • Privacy Policy

Everybody’s Son: A Novel

June 15, 2017

Everybody's Son by Thrity Umrigar
Published by Harper
Publication date: June 6th 2017
four-stars

everybody

When a novel opens during a heat wave with a ten-year-old boy breaking a window to get out of an apartment with no electricity after being left alone for a week while his mother goes out to buy drugs it doesn’t seem as if much nuance to the story can follow. Unless the author is Thrity Umrigar, one of my favorite writers for presenting human emotion at its messy, inconvenient, complex best. In Everybody’s Son, Anton is found and placed in foster care while his mother, who’s discovered unconscious at her drug dealer’s apartment awaits trial. Anton is placed with a wealthy white couple who after three years of fostering Anton wants to adopt him. David Coleman is a prominent judge whose father was a U.S. senator. With David and Dee, Anton has security, love and a life of opportunities.

Initially, Everybody’s Son reminded me of the emotionally charged movie Losing Isaiah, where a white family gets custody of a black addict’s infant son, but the movie ends when Isaiah is still a small child and the novel follows Anton through adulthood. This opens the book up to issues and situations much greater than those of a small child. Namely, Anton’s mother, Juanita, agrees to the adoption and disappears from his life. In the world of white privilege that is David and Dee’s life Anton is accepted and follows in his adopted father’s footsteps by becoming a lawyer and later deciding to run for office. Ostensibly, Anton’s life is improved immeasurably by his adoption, but throughout the novel Umrigar unearths the prejudices of race and class, showing how deep and invasive both can be.

I was reading Everybody’s Son on 7 hours of flights from the east coast back to Seattle and found Umrigar’s ability to uncover and probe much like the turbulence we encountered. Short punchy chapters aptly portray one side of the story and lulled me into support of that side until the novel, like the plane, jumped and shifted sideways, pushing me into a sense of discomfort and awareness. Even Anton’s motivations and bias come into play. Once again, Umrigar comes through with a novel that delivers on levels beyond mere entertainment. Much like Jodi Picoult’s Small Great Things, Everybody’s Son is a novel for our times and a challenge to complacency.

four-stars

Related Posts

  • Related Posts
  • Same Genre
  • 4 Star Books
  • By Thrity Umrigar
goldfinch
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
guide
A Lady’s Guide to Selling Out
educated
Educated: A Memoir
neighborhood
A Good Neighborhood
august
What I’m Reading in August
banker's
The Banker’s Wife by Cristina Alger
Small Great Things
razorblade
Razorblade Tears
gentleman in moscow
A Gentleman in Moscow
wallis
The Woman Before Wallis: A Novel
daring
Daring to Drive
secret
The Secret Wisdom of the Earth
Children of the New World: Stories
October Mini-Reviews
Troubled Daughters
Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives
honor
Honor: A Novel by Thrity Umrigar
story hour
The Story Hour
The World We Found
The World We Found
Monday
It’s Monday, June 5th: What Are You Reading?
son
Everybody’s Son by Thrity Umrigar

5 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, contemporary life, family, Harper, racism, social issues

Comments

  1. Susie | Novel Visits says

    June 17, 2017 at 8:11 am

    Love that the flight and the book offered parallel experiences! (Isn’t reading on a plane great? No way to have other things around the house to distract you.) I downloaded a sample of Everybody’s Son, but so far haven’t found time to get to it! For some reason I keep hesitating on it. Maybe I’m a little burned out on social justice themes?

    Reply
    • Catherine says

      June 19, 2017 at 6:48 pm

      Given the chaos of the times, I can see that. This is fairly subtle compared to what’s happening in the real world and it’s still largely an entertaining read- if that makes sense.

      Reply
  2. susan says

    June 19, 2017 at 2:35 pm

    Yeah I have this one on my summer list! I’m new to this author so I’m excited to check out the writing.

    Reply
  3. Monika @ Lovely Bookshelf says

    June 20, 2017 at 11:03 am

    I’m glad to hear you enjoyed this! It’s on my to-read list, and I loved The Story Hour.

    Reply
    • Catherine says

      June 20, 2017 at 7:06 pm

      She always delivers! I may not love each one of her books, but I always at least like them- which says a lot.

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  • Bloglovin
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Save time and subscribe via email

No time to keep checking for new reviews? Enter your email address to subscribe and receive notifications of new posts by email. No spam!

Currently Reading

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle
Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle
by Emily Nagoski
The Dutch House
The Dutch House
by Ann Patchett
Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me
Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me
by Adrienne Brodeur

goodreads.com

Affiliate Disclosure

I’m an affiliate for Indiebound and Amazon. If you click on a link that takes you to any of these sites and make a purchase I’ll earn a small fee, which goes towards the costs of maintaining this site. Your support is appreciated. Thank you!

Archives

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.

Theme Design By Studio Mommy · Copyright © 2022

Copyright © 2022 · Beyond Madison Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in