Mothers and Sons: A Memoir

In this poetic account, Greek novelist Kallifatides (The Siege of Troy) spins a weeklong visit with his elderly mother into a moving reflection on legacy. When Kallifatides was 68 and his mother was 92, the author returned to Athens from Sweden to write about her before she died. Over lazy mornings with coffee and cookies, the two discussed her childhood, the family’s migratory patterns, and some buried ancestral secrets. “I have a tendency to philosophize a little while I am waking up,” Kallifatides jokes at one point, before gorgeously examining his unprocessed grief for his late father. Much of the account strikes a similar balance of beauty and self-awareness. After initially worrying his mother’s death will destroy the family record, Kallifatides pauses to consider his own well of memories, such as that of a young lover whose “lips tasted of oranges.” While fretting about what to share with his own grandchildren, he posits that he’d like to leave them “the scent of a human life, the scent that, though it is not sharp, cuts through time like a perfectly honed knife through a ripe apple.” With this slim but generous volume, he’s already succeeded. It’s a stunning ode to mother and motherland alike. (Nov.)