I finished "Little Yellow Dog" and immediately started another Mosley book, and another one after that, to the extent that tells you something. After finishing "Fortunate Son," I cast about for any book by any other author, to the extent that tells you something."Fortunate Son" is at once quintessential Mosley and at the same time a big departure for him. It's essentially a fairy tale of America, and the magical realism is a new toy for him (one he seems to enjoy playing with). Yet the treatment of race and poverty and people living at the margins will be instantly familiar to even casual Mosley readers. And for the first two thirds of the book, he blends these two components together masterfully.Mosley is especially successful giving verisimilitude to a story that relies upon supernatural forces, and his continued use of the story of race in America makes this possible. Eric is nominally the fortunate son of the title, blessed with good looks and good fortune beyond explanation, and his brother Tommy finds more trouble than can be explained by mere chance. While he's building the story, Mosley plays with this device incredibly well, using his more familiar devices of race and class to lend the story credence. Eric's good luck seems supernatural but at the same time feels like exactly the outcome that American culture conspires to produce. As long as Mosley's moving the story along, his natural tendencies towards gritty realism balance out his imaginative ambitions almost perfectly.And then there's the final third, when Mosley's no longer moving the story along but needs to resolve it. The introduction of the final conflict and its resolution are of a completely different tone than is the rest of the book, and to my ear it just doesn't work. It's unfortunate, because the beginning and middle are so delightful that the ending comes off especially disappointing, like eating most of a superbly cooked meal only to get to a rotten last bite that spoils the entire experience. That's something of an exaggeration. The ending is at least competent, and when Mosley succeeds he does so like nobody in the business. "Fortunate Son" is recommended without a whole lot of passion, but recommended nonetheless.
This was a toughie to read. Tommy, a young African-American boy, and Eric, a young white boy, are raised as brothers...then traumatically separated when Tommy's mother dies and his real family comes to claim him. Mosley skims fairly quickly over the boys' resulting lives--drug-dealing and crime for the sensitive Tommy, college, girlfriends, and an All-American charmed path for the heartless Eric. The story picks back up when the young men reunite and try to make sense of their intertwined history.Fortunate Son is a powerful allegory of America's race and class divides. Frankly, it's depressing as hell. I was saddened by the casualness with which Mosley relates the horrors of street life that Tommy endures. This felt deliberate to me: "Wake up, reader," Mosley seems to say, "Poor black men like this get beat down. Rich white men succeed, sometimes without deserving it. This is what I see around me every day. What else is new?" Having said that, the book's stuck with me--a compelling warning or parable, or perhaps both.
What do You think about Fortunate Son (2006)?
I'd read maybe one Walter Mosley book before picking this up at the library the other day when I was looking for another Christopher Moore novel. I liked the cover, and the leaf was interesting, and I started reading the first page and unintentionally got several pages into it before I realized I was going to have to check it out and finish it.This book was interesting to me in two ways, and many aspects about it have stayed with me since I read it. It is a story of two brothers, one black, one white, and the things that happen in their lives to tear them apart and bring them back together again. The story was pretty ok, though the way it was written felt a little formulaic at times, but the CHARACTERS of the boys and their mother and the things the author used them to say about human nature were extremely interesting and provided the meat of the novel. I loved the characters. I loved hearing how they thought and reacted to the world, and I loved that Mosley talked about a few different types of people that don't get much representation in books or movies--people who are truly special, but not in an overly supernatural way. People who have something indescribable that often gets overlooked or pushed under the rug, but that affects their lives and the lives of those around them in an unusual way. Really, it's probably just one of the only honest representations I've seen that explores a different sort of depth of humanity.So, basically, I liked it quite a bit, and I think it is very worth reading. I hope you enjoy it as well, should you choose to read it.
—Jackie
I have been such a big fan of Mosely's mysteries that I grabbed at this audiobook on the shelf of my local library. Wow, it's like the bastard love child of Richard Wright and Danielle Steele, a series of sappy, cloying, breathless, nearly ridiculous love relationships grafted onto social commentary about how some folks become homeless. A black boy and a white boy grow up and then apart after their parents have an affair. Through a series of plot contrivances and meditations on eternal character flaws worthy of Ayn Rand, Mosely brings them back together. I've been ready to smash the remaining CDs for most of the week, but I made it to the end. I may never read this author again. Really unpleasant, VERY disappointing. I feel like somebody slipped a romance novel into the book jacket of a very favorite mystery writer. I guess that will teach me---you can't judge a book by its cover. Or even its author, sometimes. UGH!
—Nick
This book is a different take on a brother to brother relationship. I enjoyed this story, it was very well written and I liked each character even though they were flawed. It was a raw emotional story that kept me reading until the last page. I hoped for the best for the two brothers from different worlds, who had different paths and experiences in their lives, but still loved and cared for each other more than they did in their other relationships. I would recommend this novel because it is a different perspective on the racisim in this world and within one family. Fortunate Son
—Lindsey
