MixedLos Angeles Review of BooksThe work of a superb craftsman at the top of his game ... Doesn’t completely succeed in this endeavor. Haslett’s representation of bourgeois family dynamics tends to subsume and limit his engagement with issues of social and political belonging ... But interpersonal connection has unpredictable and kinetic power in Mothers and Sons, and Haslett demonstrates repeatedly that Peter finds it hard to maintain the prophylactic detachment that informs both his legal practice and his sexual experience ... Haslett certainly recognizes this guilt and its effect on narrative, and, as Mothers and Sons demonstrates, he is still exploring different ways of diagnosing and representing it.
