His Mother's Son
Cai Emmons

376 Pages

From Publishers Weekly

Accomplished playwright and filmmaker Emmons tests chilly waters in this ambitious, unsettling debut. Protagonist Jana Thomas not only isn't lovable, she's barely tolerable. Oh, she's the kindest doc in the ER, where she met her carpenter husband, Cooper Johansen, but she's so jumpy and stern a mother, she freaks out other moms. The year Evan is six, his aggressiveness drives her to the edge. In the eyes of Cooper, his mother, Seretha, and Evan's teachers, the boy is normally rambunctious and it's Jana who's violent. Here's what Cooper doesn't know and the reader does: Jana's actual name is Cadence Miller. She slipped into a new skin when she was college-age and her brother, Varney, killed their parents, a teacher and a rival student. Jana can't be a laid-back parent like Beth and Walter Miller. She'd been the brilliant, disturbed Varney's only control, but she'd loved him too much; she hadn't been able to save him or his victims. She must do better with Evan. The last quarter of the book brings dying Varney back into Jana's life; her two identities fuse and she is permitted to be herself again. Emmons's prose is generally clear and precise, but a smattering of awkward descriptive phrases ("his breathing crackles with the kind of unpredictability of a package being unwrapped"; "air ticking noisily over saliva-furred teeth") muddy the tone. Despite these lapses, and the difficulty of sympathizing with Emmons's narrator, this is a notable debut, a rich read with a generous, redemptive ending.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal

Dr. Jana Thomas has a secret that no one knows-not even her husband. Fifteen years before, she had a different life and a different name, which she abandoned when her younger brother murdered their parents and went on a killing spree at his school. Now Jana has a young son, and she begins to panic when she sees the warning signs that no one noticed in her brother. At the same time, she is contacted by her imprisoned brother, who is dying of AIDS; Jana must reveal the truth about her past to her husband while hoping that her son is not genetically predestined to become a crazed killer. A few plot details don't exactly make sense, and it is occasionally hard to sympathize with Jana, who doesn't seem to be particularly angry at her brother for killing their parents, but her confrontation with the ugly past is richly detailed. Fans of Sue Miller will enjoy this first novel by playwright and film industry worker Emmons. For most public libraries.
--Lisa Bier, Southern Connecticut State Univ., New Haven
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.