The Son of Man by Jean-Baptiste Del Amo

This is one of those books that achieves a rare combination – the mix of fine writing with a harsh, and at times almost brutal, storyline. From very early in the book, the tension and the sense of unease starts to build, and simply never stops.

We should perhaps start with a mention of the first chapter or section. There are no chapter numbers or titles, but these eleven pages at the start are set apart by the use of italics. They are not part of the book, but they set a tone. They take us back to the prehistoric, the early days of mankind, when people followed the migrating animals that were their food source. When the group might stop for a day or two so that a woman could give birth or so the group could bury the dead who were unable to keep walking. It is a savage existence, but also one that is close to nature and the world around the ragged group dressed in animal skins. This picture of savagery will fade on the reader until you reach the end of the novel, when the reasons for its inclusion will become clear.

There are almost no names used for the characters, which helps a distance between us from the main players, while at the same time being alongside them in their lives. Only those on the periphery of the story are given names.

We have three principal characters. A woman, a man, and a boy. A family, but not quite a family in the proper sense. Not a close unit. The man has been away for years. Perhaps he has been overseas, or perhaps he has been in prison. But now he’s back and attempting to start up where he left. He re-enters the world in which the woman and her son have made a comfortable existence for themselves. She has a job, her son goes to school. The bond between them is very strong and he is a sensitive boy who knows how to care for his mother when she is crippled with migraine headaches.

This is the description of the father:

The man is tall and thin, dressed in oversize jeans smeared with oil and grease, a red checked shirt over a white cotton T-shirt and an old, threadbare leather jackets. He is still young, though his chestnut beard and hair are flecked with white that glitters when he tilts his head. He has obviously just come from the barber’s, because the boy can see a dusting of hair clippings in his throat and the exposed section of his trapezius muscles.

The man asks the boy whether he recognizes him and the boy nods shyly. To indicate his satisfaction, the man nods too.

This is the style of the book – the man, the woman, and the boy. The narrator stands close to the group, alongside them, within the small details of every scene. This is what gives the book its power. This skilful narration is perfectly illustrated by this passage where the boy looks how at his carpet, his play-town carpet on which his model cars have not driven the streets for a long time:

In the dim glow of the bedroom, from the warm haven of his bed, between the smooth, threadbare sheets, as the child drifts off into sleep, the world of the carpet seems just as real to him as the one in which he lives – this run-down neighbourhood of potholed streets, dingy houses, dustbins spilling their sour breath into desolate yards, the rocky patch of waste ground like a minefield, strewn with rubbish, dog shit and broken bottles – and, by a simple act of will, he can effortlessly project himself into the perfect streets, the consummate order of the carpet world that is accessible only to him.

The newly arrived father removes his family from the city and drives them far out into the mountains, to a farm where his father used to live. A place the man knew as a boy. It is a ruin, old and half built, where the man has brought tools and food and all the things they will need in order to live there. He has pre-planned this move. Del Amo beautifully captures the strangeness of this landscape for a boy who has grown up in the city:

He carries on walking, following a chink of light in the vegetation, then stops and listens intently. Beneath the quiet that his footsteps have drowned out, something is rumbling in the deep of the woods, beyond the thin sparse trees, rising from the dense and knotty heart – a whisper joined by sounds that are unfamiliar to his ear: the hammering of a black woodpecker, the sig of broken trunks followed by a muffled fall, the yelp of a marten like a burst of laughter.

A shudder runs through the boy and he races out of the forest as fast as he can to escape the shadowy trees following hard on his heels.

The crumbling ruin of Les Roches symbolise both the horrible past that the man has suffered at the hands of his own father, but also the perilous fragility of the relationship between the man and the woman. There is precious little joy, even within what most of us might see as a beautiful landscape of the mountain meadows lands. We gradually learn little snippets of the backstory of the man and the woman, how they met and how their relationship developed. The story of their last few weeks in the city.

We also have some of the most chilling scenes. The woman is pregnant, but the child belongs to a friend of the man, from the time when he had left the woman and the boy on their own for so long. The man invites his friend for dinner, remembers old times together, and welcomes his friend uncomfortably back to the woman’s home in the city. Then, at the end of the evening, after all this forced camaraderie, the slow simmering tension, he threatens his friend, saying he might kill him if he ever sees him again. Up in the mountains, some months later, the woman knows she must get back to the city for help, to find a doctor. But the man has stored up everything they will need: baby clothes, formula, nappies, towels. He has hidden all these things in a small locked hut. This is the point at which the woman realises that she will never get away unless she flees. It is the beginning of a tumultuous slide towards the terrible conclusion of the book. It is raw, and it is brilliantly written.

Reviewer: Marcus Hobson

Published by Text Publishing