ONLY SON

A man navigates childhood and fatherhood, first as an only child and then as the parent to one.

How does one be a good son? How does one be a good father? These are the questions that animate Moffett’s solo debut, a powerful and deeply funny exploration of how the things that happen when we’re young shape our lives. Moffett circles this concept during the novel’s first section, which deals with the unnamed narrator’s childhood in the wake of his father’s death. In the book’s first pages, he recalls how one of his classmates, Darlene, offered her sympathies, noting that her dad was also dead, though it was immediately clarified that, “He just ran off to Ohio with some woman he met on an airplane.” The blows are always dealt with a dose of the surreal, a wink and a nod toward the absurdity of life. The lingering trauma, though, makes its way into the relationships he fosters during the book’s most powerful sections. In adulthood, he’s a writer living in the desert outside of Los Angeles with his wife and son. Despite an awareness of his own shortcomings, he can’t help but have a tension-filled relationship with his son, one that mirrors his own angsty relationship with his mother. Big drama cedes to the mundanity of raising a child and growing into middle age. Little anecdotes, like how his son prays to Zeus instead of God because Zeus is probably less busy, give the story its momentum. At its core, it’s a novel of observations. Moffett does, however, give his narrator some catharsis when he’s able to clearly express feelings through a letter that he can’t seem to tell his son through words: “I tell him he’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Humor gives this stirring meditation on the nature of familial relations a playful, biting edge.