The Son [Paperback]

This is a stunning, ground breaking book. As a reader and a writer, I feel indebted to Counterpoint Press for reissuing it. My sadness is that not enough people know about it. All writers-in-training should read The Son to learn how dangerously deep one must go to write true literature. My other sadness is that Gina Berriault is not alive to hear my praise.

Vivian is a shallow, naïve, and narcissistic protagonist. She is not a character one loves, but she is poignantly real. She begins the novel as a privileged young lady who, against her parents' better judgment, marries an equally narcissistic aspiring actor, Paul. She quickly becomes pregnant. "The child was to make the marriage last forever, though she had no doubt that it would anyway. But the pregnancy lasted longer than the marriage." Paul is soon gone and Vivian is left with her son, the son of the title, David.

As the title of the novel suggests, David plays a central role in the narrative. Though Vivian drifts from husband to husband, lover to lover, these relationships are ancillary to her relationship with David. Vivian, though, is so attuned to her own emotional needs and her own desires that she has difficulty generating any awareness of others' needs, even her son. Indeed, David's needs threaten Vivian because she knows that, ultimately, she cannot fulfill them. David will become a man independent of her.

Ms. Berriault expresses this better than I can in describing Vivian watching David during a quail hunt. In the scene, David's youthful appearance and awkwardness "roused in her a desire for him to remain as he was, the only one and the closest one, the dearest, incontestably more dear than any man who was to become her lover and who was now a stranger." Of course, the tension in the book revolves around the inevitable. David will grow up; as Vivian fears, he will "leave her forever." Only the manner and timing are in doubt.

The climax is a disturbing scene. Vivian's desperation for male affection, for a man to need her and for her son to need her also, create a tension that becomes overbearing. Tragedy is the only realistic end. Vivian's needs are too great to be satiated by anyone, least of all by her son. In a scene leading toward the tragedy, mother and son are walking in the mountains: "She glanced over at him as he leaned against a tree two yards away from her. Gazing at her, he looked stricken and pale in the sun, like someone waiting to be sacrificed."

The morally squeamish will definitely be uncomfortable given the details of Vivian's life. Likewise, those looking for a likeable character, someone with whom they can identify will be disappointed. Vivian is an unintentional monster. Her emotionally demanding nature threatens to devour all. And yet, Gina Berriault does not leave the reader without the escape of occasional dark humor, like the house tour scene where Vivian inspects her own photograph as if she is an outsider in her own house. But even the humor is powered by Vivian and her tragic lust for men, particularly, to need her.

Gina Berriault is an incredible author. This book is a fine work of craftsmanship and of art, too. The novel illuminates a truth about a certain type of person and truths about us all. Ms. Berriault deserves a much wider audience. While this is not her best work, THE SON is a far better novel than most writers will ever produce.

I have to say I wasn't entirely enthralled with this book throughout most of it (I definitely could not relate to the main character), and I was even less impressed as I came to the last 20 pages. I didn't finish it. Who knows - I could have missed something at the end that turns this book around; however, it wasn't worth my time to find out. It literally made me sick. I was excited to read "Women in their Beds," with all of its critical acclaim, but now I'm afraid to.

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