Century's Son: A Novel [Paperback]

Robert Boswell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2003

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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com 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 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Peter Ivanovich Kamenev, the aphorist/con man whose lie that he is 100 years old gives Boswell's new novel its title, claims that "mystery is the truth, history the lie." Kamenev, impoverished, lustful, deceitful, a celebrity intellectual, is coming to live with his daughter, Zhenya, in Hayden, Ill. Zhenya is a political scientist at Hayden University, for whom history is the only truth. Yet much to her chagrin, she is surrounded with mysteries, beginning with the death of her son, Philip, who hanged himself at 12. There is also the undetermined parentage of Petey, the son her daughter, Emma, bore at 14. Zhenya wants to forget these truths to go after her father's myth she has compiled a file to undermine him. Morgan, Zhenya's husband, is less concerned with truth than integrity. He is a garbage man who, when Zhenya married him, was the heroic local union president, leading a successful strike. In the 10 years since Philip's death, he has resigned from his position and existed in a trance of melancholy, only roused from it by a crusade to keep his garbage truck partner, Danny Ford, out of prison. Boswell's treatment of the misfortunes of this eccentric household is reminiscent of the dilemma Emerson pointed out, long ago, in "Experience": the diminishment of grief feels like a failure to authentically commit to some loved other, yet grief's prolongation really is a failure to commit to others. Boswell's story relentlessly unfolds the logic of that dark insight.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Picador (July 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312422318
• ISBN-13: 978-0312422318
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,006,220 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Dog Years, September 16, 2002

By 

Georgie Stillman (San Diego, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Century's Son (Hardcover)

As I read this moving, and beautifuly written, accont of a family trying to put into a focus the suicide of their son, I kept re-reading the dog Prince's coments. The entire ankst of the family can be seen in the dog's (youthful) padding around seeking the lost son, and then her various thoghts about the family as she ages, and ... Can't reveal plot lines here. If I were a teacher, I would reccomend this book to young students. The incidence of teenage suicide is so real, and disturbing, that this novel, and the fully developed lives of the characters after the suicide, might be a powerful message.

The sophisticated writing of this author indicates wide popular audinece, but somethow I don't think he will find it with this book. It brought many tears to my eyes, but I am old enought to
have lived through some of these scenes. And have old dogs.

This is a painful novel, from which comes no resolution, just hope, - which is what I think the author intended.

GMS

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing that this book doesn't get more attention, September 1, 2002

By 

"efchay" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Century's Son (Hardcover)

Century's Son was a truly rewarding read. if you enjoy rich characterization, then you will enjoy Boswell's writing. Few authors are able to create such textured characters with as much feeling and depth as Boswell does here. If anything, the only character that did not strike me as particularly real or original is Peter Kamenev, who is slightly stereotyped as the precocious, over-sexed, hyperbolic old man. Nevertheless, Kamenev if extremely enjoyable as a character as well.

The only reason why people may not like this book is that there were no earth-shattering developments in the plot. Nothing truly happened to resolve the lingering tension in the book. But to me, that's precisely the point. The richness of the characters is not drowned out by a schmaltzy plot device. Every character is allowed to develop and reveal his faults at their own pace. They develop organically.

You know that you've found a satisfying read when your chief complaint is that the book is too short!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great new novel from a writer who only gets better!, April 25, 2002

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Century's Son (Hardcover)

Boswell's new novel is, in short, the product of an experienced and risk-taking novelist working to the fullest extent of his talents. His usual abilities are on display -- heartbreaking characters, keen obervations, crisp and stirring prose -- yet every aspect has been upped a notch. CENTURY'S SON manages to capture the varied rhythms of life at this particular collision of time and place and shape them into a work of towering literary merit. I have read no better novel this year, and don't expect to read one as good for a very long time.