‘My mother always emphasised the importance of smartness, even if you were going to your grave.’
– Sons of Great Men
[ About Sons of Great Men ]
Can you bond with someone who’s on borrowed time? Victor’s mum Jayne is stuck between life and death in a London hospital. Visiting from the Isle of Wight, Victor sofa-surfs at his daughter’s flat, accidentally begins an affair with an attractive doctor and battles his dyslexia to record Jayne’s memoirs. She’s been a top political journalist; he’s a sometime actor and pantomime dame, but she’s mistaking him for his favoured elder brother William, a Tory MP. To add to the confusion, Jayne’s convinced she’s being visited at night by former Labour prime minister Harold Wilson.
Victor and Jayne have a brittle relationship. After many false dawns, he hopes they may bond at last over her rambling and disjointed tales. As the days of her illness blur into weeks, Victor pieces together family secrets that throw new light on his own bittersweet story. At the heart of it all is a feature article, Sons of Great Men, that Jayne wrote in the 1960s to gain a foothold in the male-dominated newsroom of a Fleet Street paper.
Victor’s summer reckoning – with family, mortality, work, love and belonging – may strike a chord with those who know how it feels to reach one of life’s crossroads.
[ My Review]
Sons of Great Men by Adrian Ross published March 1st, with the addition of a bonus short story and book group discussion prompts. (Lieutenant is a delightful short story tucked away at the end of the novel. It has an office-based setting and the story takes a wry redirection which gives it a very satisfactory ending!!)
In Sons of Great Men Victor De Vries is at a turning point in his life. Now, working as an usher in a small theatre on the Isle of Wight, he lives quite a solitary existence. His marriage broke up years previously, with his adult daughter now living in London. His ambition to be a successful actor has plateaued with his leading roles taking the form of the Dame in the local pantomime. Victor enjoys the dressing up aspect of the performance and has, over the years, considered his sexuality, but never in any great depth. His brother, William, a politician, lives a very different life, leaving Victor with the constant feeling that he was a disappointment to his family.
His parents parted company years previously with his mother, over the years, focusing her attention on her career in journalism. When Victor receives a call informing him that his mother is in intensive care following emergency heart surgery, his world starts to spin. He immediately makes the long journey to be by her side and is taken aback by all the tubes attached to her and how fragile she looks. Victor is very aware of the close relationship between William and their mother and has felt this all his life. Now, his mother thinks he is William and asks him to record her memoirs. Victor’s dyslexia has been his constant companion over the years so this is quite the ask, but he cannot refuse her this request.
As the days pass, visitors come and go, and Victor gets used to the mechanics of the hospital ward. As his mother slips in and out of consciousness, he tries to put some sense to her words, but it is all quite rambling and nonsensical. But in her moments of clarity she reveals unexpected snippets from her past that throw Victor off kilter. Between his hospital visits Victor reunites with his daughter, has a brief relationship with a doctor and makes a few new acquaintances. As he tries to put some order into his mother’s thoughts, he also reflects on his own life and the choices he has made. He considers his own mortality and the time left to him. What does he really want with his life? And who does he want to be with?
Adrian Ross, with humour and a gentle tone, writes quite a reflective novel about self-discovery and the importance of choosing our own path in life. As Victor’s life takes a dramatic pivot he has no choice but to reconsider his options. The poignancy of this story lies in the shifting relationship between children and their parents through the years. The title of the book relates to a journalistic piece that Victor’s mother wrote in the early part of her career and its theme carries through the novel as Victor considers his own relationship to his parents.
Sons of Great Men is a tender study of the family dynamic and the challenges of witnessing the decline in the health of our parents. With a lovely cast of characters, it is a sincere and engaging debut, a slightly off-beat read with plenty of wit and heart.
[ Thank you to Adrian Ross for a copy of Sons of Great Men in exchange for my honest review ]
Sons of Great Men ~ Purchase Link
[ Bio ]
Adrian Ross has contributed to the New Writing Scotland anthology, The Reviews Hub website and the print magazines Postbox (Scotland’s international short story magazine) and Writers’ Forum. He studied Drama and Film at the University of East Anglia, where he was a founding member of Minotaur Theatre Company. His improvised career has ranged across the arts, media and adult education sectors. He also taught evening classes for Cardiff University, in Creative Writing, Film Studies, Theatre and Arts Management. He lives in his native city of Edinburgh with his wife, Sarah, a fellow writer and poet.
