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{{infoboxinfobox1
|title=The Son
|sort=Son, The
|publisher=Simon & Schuster
|date=July 2013
|website=http://www.philippmeyer.net/
|video=9hIU3cXWmqQ
|summary=Meyer's sweeping Western saga about one Texas family – ranging from the 1840s to the present day – brims with violence and philosophical tension. This momentous American story ranks amongst the best novels of the new century.
|cover=0857209426
|aznuk=0857209426
|aznus=0857209426
}}
Philipp Meyer's second novel, ''The Son,'' is an epic, multi-generational saga of Texas life. Tracing the McCullough family from the middle of the nineteenth century to the present day, Meyer joins those writing today's masterpieces of American 'dirty realism': Ron Rash, [[:Category:David Vann|David Vann]], Richard Ford and especially Cormac McCarthy. Like McCarthy's ''Blood Meridian,'' ''The Son'' is a gory Western that transcends a simplistic cowboys-versus-Indians dichotomy to draw broader conclusions about the universality of violence in a nihilistic world.
Meyer's greatest debt is certainly to McCarthy, whom he follows in both setting and style: their sentences have a run-on quality, with clauses often joined by comma splices instead of semicolons. Moreover, they share a deadpan, bawdy humour that sometimes feels out of place amidst such apocalyptically serious subject matter. In addition, Eli is a grandiose, larger-than-life character who in his judicious death-dealing resembles Judge Holden, the chilling villain of ''Blood Meridian'' (besides which, I can hardly imagine another fictional character who would get away with saying 'absquatulation' when 'departure' would do).
This is not a panoramic novel of place à la James Michener or Edward Rutherfurd – otherwise , it would be entitled ''Texas''; instead it prioritizes family inheritance, tracking what is passed on between generations in the violent new American empire. Although ''The Son'' might not seem a very evocative title, it does indicate the primacy of family relationships, as well as the prevalence of missing and surrogate father figures in the novel, and also hints at the future paths the McCullough family will take in its legitimate and illegitimate branches.
''The Son'' is a momentous American story, amongst the best from the last decade. It encompasses every American conflict from the Civil War through to Iraq, presenting a cycle of violence that's as old as the fossils and arrowheads buried in the Texan soil. Meyer's novel is certainly a twenty-first-century contender for Great American Novel; like ''Moby Dick,'' it ranges from the particular – a whole chapter on the Indians' myriad uses for a buffalo carcass – to the general, with its far-reaching critique of the whole of the American enterprise. Weighty but rewarding, ''The Son'' is highly recommended.
If you can handle another big, violent story set on American frontiers, take on [[Canada by Richard Ford]] or [[Caribou Island by David Vann]]. For a lighter read, try [[Devil's Cut by J R Ward]].
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