Centurys Waning Son
From its opening premise, Robert Boswell’s novel Century’s Son bears nearly all the qualities of a certifiable postmodern epic. Set in Middle America’s Hayden, Illinois, the story examines the lives of Morgan and Zhenya, married twenty-odd years and living each day with the memory of their son Philip’s suicide ten years earlier. ... The couple’s surviving daughter, Emma, age twenty during the course of the novel’s central events, is a diver on the university diving team and mother of a five-year-old son whose paternal heritage she keeps a secret. ... The only character who shows a sense of being able to live consciously with history is Peter, who, in claiming to be one hundred years old, is the self-announced “century’s son” in the title.