& sons, by David Gilbert

A novel about a novelist, the literary life, publishing, and art, with a plethora of in jokes.  No wonder the blurbs on the cover, most from fellow novelists, are ecstatic.  But it is well-written and witty, and if you get most of the references, you too can feel Smart.  It is also, obviously, about fathers and sons.  The “&” in the title echoes the name of novelist A. N. Dyer’s brilliant first book, Ampersand.  More than a little bit Salinger, a touch A separate piece, and set in a well-known prep school like the one Dyer attended, the book has sold like hotcakes for decades.  Dyer has three sons.  The eldest, Richard, is a screenwriter tempted by the possibility of having his own work filmed by a famous director and actor if he can talk his father out of the movie rights to Ampersand.  Jaime, the second son, has traveled the world making documentaries, primarily of people in pain and his most recent film, which goes viral, is truly creepy.  The youngest is Andy, namesake of Andrew Dyer, his Benjamin, and the product of a short-lived liaison with an au pair.  His birth precipitated Dyer’s divorce and his estrangement from his older sons seventeen years before the book opens.  Overlooking it all is Phillip Topping, the intermittently omniscient narrator.  He is the son of A. N. Dyer’s childhood friend Charles Henry Topping, who was the model for an important character in Ampersand and whose funeral opens the novel.  Like his father, Phillip has an uneasy relationship with the Dyers and has been used in many ways by them.  The book turns on a weird and, I thought, unnecessary bit of science fiction – I’m not sure we are really supposed to buy it.  Too clever by half although a page-turner.  434 pp.