The Son

By: Philipp Meyer

Narrated by: Will Patton, Kate Mulgrew, Scott Shepherd, Clifton Collins Jr.

Length: 17 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's summary

Audie Award Finalist, Literary Fiction, 2014

Soon to be a TV Series on AMC starring Pierce Brosnan and co-written by Philipp Meyer.

The critically acclaimed, New York Times bestselling epic, a saga of land, blood, and power that follows the rise of one unforgettable Texas family from the Comanche raids of the 1800s to the oil booms of the 20th century.

Part epic of Texas, part classic coming-of-age story, part unflinching examination of the bloody price of power, The Son is a gripping and utterly transporting novel that maps the legacy of violence in the American west with rare emotional acuity, even as it presents an intimate portrait of one family across two centuries.

Eli McCullough is just twelve-years-old when a marauding band of Comanche storm his Texas homestead and brutally murder his mother and sister, taking him as a captive. Despite their torture and cruelty, Eli—against all odds—adapts to life with the Comanche, learning their ways, their language, taking on a new name, finding a place as the adopted son of the chief of the band, and fighting their wars against not only other Indians, but white men, too-complicating his sense of loyalty, his promised vengeance, and his very understanding of self. But when disease, starvation, and westward expansion finally decimate the Comanche, Eli is left alone in a world in which he belongs nowhere, neither white nor Indian, civilized or fully wild.

Deftly interweaving Eli's story with those of his son, Peter, and his great-granddaughter, JA, The Son deftly explores the legacy of Eli's ruthlessness, his drive to power, and his life-long status as an outsider, even as the McCullough family rises to become one of the richest in Texas, a ranching-and-oil dynasty of unsurpassed wealth and privilege.

Harrowing, panoramic, and deeply evocative, The Son is a fully realized masterwork in the greatest tradition of the American canon-an unforgettable novel that combines the narrative prowess of Larry McMurtry with the knife edge sharpness of Cormac McCarthy.

©2013 Philipp Meyer (P)2013 HarperCollinsPublishers

Will Patton is fantastic!!

Will Patton is a wonderful narrator. The rest of the narrators were unimpressive. Because Will only narrated less than a third of the book I was very disappointed and asked for a refund for this book. There are better books to invest a credit.

Didn't want the story to end.

This has been the best book I have listened to on audible yet. I average a book or more a week (I listen while I work). What a fantastically moving ending. Characters are fully developed. Portrayal of the Comanches was a very delicate dichotomy of the good & the bad. Excellent read.

Just How Drastic Can Humankind Be?

The Son, written by Philipp Meyer, narrated by Will Patton, Kate Mulgrew , Scott Shepherd, and Clifton Collins Jr. This is a story of nihilation. Or, if you rather, the ability of each individual man, and therein each individual society, to obliterate itself, and from its ashes, metamorphize into its next embodiment. This is BOTH Hegelian and Nietzchen in philosophy. Examples: Friedrich Hegel taught us; each event tends to be replaced by an opposite, which is later replaced by a resolution of the two extremes. Fredrick Nietzsche has said; he who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster, and if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. You will need to know of those philosophies to understand the tale being told.

This book tells the story of what happens when countervailing forces convulse and how all life is a drastic conflict.

The story takes place in post Mexican Texas, and continues into the present day. It is told in short episodes each such chapter telling happenings in the life of one of three individuals from three distinct generations of a typical Texan oligarchic family. The related episodes are intermixed, hopping from the progenitor, to the granddaughter to the son, back and forth. One would think that makes the book difficult to follow. That is not true, it is easy and entertaining to track. The ugliness of the family progenitor, the weakness of his son, and the vicissitudes of their third generation who in this novel is a woman taking on modernity, are amazingly interesting, and supremely harsh.

This is a masterful Texas story, where we find no one is without evil. No one. Those we have sympathy for, are only getting their fair share of what they deserve, and those that are heinous we come to understand. A truly unique study into humanity.

Exciting, involving, and literate. This is a book for the ages. If you find value in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, this is a read for you. If you were excited reading Cormac McCarthy”s Blood Meridian, this is the book for you.

Epic

I picked 5 stars because I loved everything about this story. The readers were outstanding and I could not wait to finish it. A bit sad it's over. I will re- listen to this one in the future.

Absolutely FANTASTIC!!!

I loved this story!
It is the perfect combination of beauty and grit, sorrow and heartache.
The telling of three generations of a family that are striving for an unattainable happiness that has either passed them or was never truly there. They’ve all been robbed of something much more valuable then riches.
This is what it is to be human.

Thank you Phillip Meyer for creating this story that will someday be a classic right up there with Steinbeck’s “East Of Eden” and “The Grapes Of Wraith”. I also place it on the shelf next to Cormac McCarthy’s “Child Of God”, “The Road” and James Lee Burke’s “Two For Texas”.

Will Patton is one of my absolute favorite Narrators and this is him at his best.
Kate Mulgrew is a Powerhouse Narrator (check her performance out in a number of Joe Hill books).
Scott Shepherd I will be following and paying much closer attention to as he captured all of the nuances of the character beautifully.
Clifton Collins Jr. should be proud of his performance. He was dead on.

Thank you again, from a new fan!

Listen to this!

What made the experience of listening to The Son the most enjoyable?

The gorgeous voices and complex story and also a hidden history that I found fascinating.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Eli due to his amazing journey, but his son Pete is a close 2nd.

Have you listened to any of the narrators’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

nope, but will in the future

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

A Story as Big as Texas

Any additional comments?

Following the timeline can be a bit confusing and I had to listen to the end a couple of times to make sure I understood it.

Texas story to be remembered

An important part of our history already slipping out of memory told in novel form with characters we want to know better.

A good read

I can't remember what I was thinking when I chose this book, it is not a genre I would normally choose.
I found it a bit slow but I am not sorry I bought it.

Not a great book but a good book worth the listen

I guess I have never been a big fan of flashbacks and flash forwards. I am more if a traditional story guy. With that said, you can judge my remarks here to suit yourself. I live classic westerns. It is definitely a western just not classic. It ain't no Lonesome dove by any shake. It does expose the underbelly of a couple of centuries of racism on all sides and weaves the old times and recent times into an pattern of the story of a family that is both very good and very bad. would the listen. Very good performances.

Incredible

Will Patton is brilliant. The story is brilliant. This book is a top 10 for me. It is immersive and complex. Do not pass this up.