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    Everybody's Son: A Novel
    Everybody's Son: A Novel
    Everybody's Son: A Novel
    Audiobook10 hours

    Everybody's Son: A Novel

    Written by Thrity Umrigar

    Narrated by Josh Bloomberg

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    About this audiobook

    “Everybody’s Son probes directly into the tender spots of race and privilege in America. . . . With assured prose and deep insight into the human heart, Umrigar explores the moral gray zone of what parents, no matter their race, will do for love.” — Celeste Ng, author of Everything I Never Told You

    The bestselling, critically acclaimed author of The Space Between Us and The World We Found deftly explores issues of race, class, privilege, and power and asks us to consider uncomfortable moral questions in this probing, ambitious, emotionally wrenching novel of two families—one black, one white.

    During a terrible heat wave in 1991—the worst in a decade—ten-year-old Anton has been locked in an apartment in the projects, alone, for seven days, without air conditioning or a fan. With no electricity, the refrigerator and lights do not work. Hot, hungry, and desperate, Anton shatters a window and climbs out. Cutting his leg on the broken glass, he is covered in blood when the police find him.

    Juanita, his mother, is discovered in a crack house less than three blocks away, nearly unconscious and half-naked. When she comes to, she repeatedly asks for her baby boy. She never meant to leave Anton—she went out for a quick hit and was headed right back, until her drug dealer raped her and kept her high. Though the bond between mother and son is extremely strong, Anton is placed with child services while Juanita goes to jail.

    The Harvard-educated son of a US senator, Judge David Coleman is a scion of northeastern white privilege. Desperate to have a child in the house again after the tragic death of his teenage son, David uses his power and connections to keep his new foster son, Anton, with him and his wife, Delores—actions that will have devastating consequences in the years to come.

    Following in his adopted family’s footsteps, Anton, too, rises within the establishment. But when he discovers the truth about his life, his birth mother, and his adopted parents, this man of the law must come to terms with the moral complexities of crimes committed by the people he loves most.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateJun 6, 2017
    ISBN9780062675835
    Author

    Thrity Umrigar

    Thrity Umrigar is the author of seven novels Everybody’s Son, The Story Hour, The World We Found, The Weight of Heaven, The Space Between Us, If Today Be Sweet, and Bombay Time; a memoir, First Darling of the Morning; and a children’s picture book, When I Carried You in My Belly. A former journalist, she was awarded a Nieman Fellowship to Harvard and was a finalist for the PEN Beyond Margins Award. A professor of English at Case Western Reserve University, she lives in Cleveland, Ohio.  

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    Reviews for Everybody's Son

    4/5

    107 ratings10 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Not a fabulous piece of literature but it covered some difficult topics around race and white privledge in the USA
    • 5/5
      Powerful narrative
      Shows how those in power control and manipulate to get what they want
    • 3/5
      I really liked the first third of the book when Anton was a child. When he was 9 the biracial boy was placed in a foster home with a wealthy white couple who had lost their only son. I felt sorry for everyone here as heartbreaking decisions were made, some of which were ethically questionable. Unfortunately, I wasn't that crazy about the rest of the book. It had too much politics for me and Anton's progression from Harvard to attorney general was so rushed and uneventful. I couldn't believe that he would encounter no racism or other difficulties along the way. Finally, when Anton learned how he had been misled about his past, the resolution felt too pat. I expected to like this more based on the beginning of the book, but I was glad when it was over.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this though provoking novel very much. Anton is locked for a week in an apartment while his mother does drugs He is rescued by a well to do white family who lost their son in a car accident. What follows is a story of weath and privilege raising a young black child. Like a social experiment . Law and morality battle with good intentions and secrets. A recurring theme is stated by Anton’s young girlfriend “ I’m not sure if you are the whitest black man I’ve ever met or the blackest white man I’ve ever met.
    • 4/5
      I like her writing and enjoy her books. Some interesting questions about race in America so a timely book
    • 4/5
      I received a free copy of Everybody's Son from the publisher -- thank you!

      Anton, a young Black boy, is taken away from his mother and fostered (eventually adopted) by a rich, white, political family. But everything is not as it seems with this family's decision to bring him into their lives, and painful secrets come to light throughout the novel.

      This is a tough read, but an important and beautiful one. The characters are complex, flawed. Through their decisions and inner conflicts, Everybody's Son raises questions about race, identity, what it means to be a good parent.

      I will definitely be recommending this one.
    • 4/5
      In this novel, Judge David Coleman and his wife Delores lost their only son James five years earlier. David, desperate to turn their lives around, talks Delores into fostering a nine-year-old bi-racial boy, Anton Vesper, who had been abandoned for seven days by his crack-addled mother and turned over to social services. David develops a fierce love for Anton, and both he and Delores devote their time to giving Anton every opportunity. David takes steps to keep Anton with him, and after three years, the Colemans adopt him. David is ecstatic: “He didn’t care what anyone believed, even Anton himself. This boy belonged with them. And he was destined for great things. He deserved a better life than his mother ever could have provided.”As for Anton, as time went by, “David and Delores had become his real family, and his real mother had become a phantom, a cautionary tale, an embarrassment.”Anton grows up to be very successful, graduating from law school, becoming the state attorney general, and even deciding to run for governor of the state. But then he finds out about how David really managed to get full custody of him, and everything he thought he knew about his life is turned upside down.He comes to realize: “. . . there were no adults. There were just tall children stumbling around the world, walking pools of unfinished hopes, unmet needs, and seething desires.”Discussion: Over his entire life, Anton had felt inauthentic in a way: “a black boy who seemed white.” In college, a black girlfriend had said to him: “I can’t decide if you’re the blackest white man I’ve ever met or the whitest black man.” Her words devastated Anton: “He felt as if she had unmasked him, laid bare the central conundrum of his life. For the rest of his life, her words would haunt him. He knew this with an immediate and fierce surety.”The fact was, as he mused, he only knew how to be the son of a rich white man, heir to a political destiny. He never learned how to be a poor black woman’s son, but that is what he also was. Whose son was he? Could he ever, he wondered, fuse together “all the strands of his life: past and present, black and white, poor and rich”? To me, Anton's questioning about his racial identity wasn't convincing, perhaps because the author didn't illustrate how it affected him - other than superficially - until the very end of the book. Even then, Anton never comes across as having as much depth as any of his parents do. Their stories were much more developed and interesting to me.Evaluation: This book raises many questions about morality, race, class, and privilege, with clear answers not always evident. It would provide good discussions for a book club.
    • 4/5
      This son in this novel reminds me of Barack Obama. Due to the actions of his neglectful and addicted mother, the young boy Anton is put into foster care. His white foster father is a political power who sees Anton as a replacement for his birth son, who died tragically in his late teens. The foster parents, David and Delores, speak past each other constantly, and David makes a devil's bargain for permanent custody. At Harvard, Anton meets Carine, a strong, politically active black woman who painfully knocks him off his father's path. As David moves up the political ladder, becoming a senator as was his father before him, Anton reluctantly follows until kismet, in the form of his birth mother, intervenes. Two voices are heard in the story, David and Anton, and I think the plot suffers mightily for neutralizing Delores and Carine. There's a satisfying but somewhat predictable resolution. Not as good as her other novels, especially The Story Hour.
    • 4/5
      3.5 Anton, a young black boy, was only ten when his life was irrevocably changed. Left alone in a sweltering apartment with little food, by his crack addicted mother, he manages to break a window and climb out. He will be taken by social services and will find himself as a foster child, living with a prominent white family, father a judge, a family who is still recovering from the grief of losing their only child. Many interesting moral questions arise in this novel, the first novel this author has written that is not about those of Indian descent. Abuse of power, white privilege, a wrong committed, racial bias, would make a good book discussion. Anton is a wonderful character, but this book, his life follows an almost storybook trajectory, Anton, himself almost too good to be true. The writing is without much emotional, mechanical and I was all set to rate this three stars, until the last third of the book. Anton comes face to face with his past, and finally cracks in the facade begin to appear. I decided, don't know whether the author meant this to be, but the writing in the first third I took to mimic the closed off feelings of Anton. He was only I half a life, doing what was expected of him, finding some joy, feeling some sadness, but he was far from a whole person.The story is interesting and as I said will raise many questions. The prose is clear and concise, and the book flows well. Will being resting to see if any readers come to the same conclusion I did about the writing style mimicing Anton's feelings. Loved the ending, it was fitting and right.
    • 4/5
      A special thank you to Edelweiss and Harper for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.Thrity Umrigar is a beautiful writer who capitalizes on human emotion in her latest novel about two families that couldn't be more different. During a terrible heatwave in 1991, ten-year-old Anton has been locked in his mother's apartment in the projects. After being by himself for seven days without any air-conditioning, or fan, with the windows nailed shut, and no electricity, Anton breaks a window and climbs out. He is bleeding from a wound in his leg when the police find him. All-the-while, his mother, Juanita is discovered unconscious and half-naked in a crack house less than three blocks away. When she comes to, she immediately asks for her "baby boy" insisting she only left for a quick hit, but that her drug dealer kept her high while repeatedly raping her. Anton is placed with child services when his mother is sent to jail. David Coleman is the son of a US senator and a white Harvard-educated judge. After the death of his only high-school-aged son, Coleman is desperate for a home with a child again. David and his wife, Delores, foster Anton and quickly grow attached to the bright boy. Despite Anton's mother's existence, Coleman uses his power, connections, and white privilege to keep his foster son. Anton follows in his adoptive father's footsteps and seems to have a knack for politics that is complimented by his charm. On the cusp of greatness, Anton learns the truth about his mother and the lengths Coleman went to to keep him as his very own. He begins to question who he really is—he is nobody's son, yet everybody's son. Umrigar explores class, race, power, privilege, and morals in this emotional heart-wrenching story that will stay with the reader long after it is finished.