An estranged mother and son confront their past, in the new novel from the author of Union Atlantic

The great American novel may be hard to define, but Adam Haslett is certainly having the great American career. Twice shortlisted for the Pulitzer and once for the National book award, he has followed up an acclaimed debut (the short story collection You Are Not a Stranger Here) with three novels at dignified intervals of six to eight years, including the highly garlanded Imagine Me Gone. On the side, a constellation of fellowships, and a journalistic career. As a way to pursue a life in writing, I would say to my own students: this is how it’s done.

It’s strange, then, to read Mothers and Sons and reflect on just how much of his third novel wouldn’t make it through a writers’ workshop. Haslett is a writer of extraordinary strengths – he excels at an emotional undercurrent, the trancelike rhythms of routine and the cauterised numbness of trauma – whose architectural abilities, the skills required to craft the underlying tectonic structure of a story, seem strangely underdeveloped here.