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Each Man's Son

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Each Man's Son

Written by: Hugh MacLennan
Narrated by: Billy MacLellan
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About this listen

Dan Ainslie, a brilliant doctor working with the miners of his native Cape Breton Island, is forty-two and deeply in love with his wife. Longing for the son he can never have, he comes to love the young Alan MacNeil, whose father deserted him and his mother several years before. Alan's father's return brings tragedy to those around him.

©2018 Hugh MacLennan (P)2022 McGill-Queen’s University Press Canadian Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction

What the critics say

“What is distinctive about Each Man’s Son is its warmth and intimacy … Expertly planned and executed, it is the most human of his books.” — The Globe and Mail

“Each Man’s Son has many of the qualities that we have come to admire in MacLennan's work. It has a clear and, at times, eloquent prose style; it has many individual scenes that are sharply and sympathetically projected; and it gives constant evidence of a lively and flexible mind.” — The University of Toronto Quarterly
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I read mostly classics. After reading a number of works by Australian writers Richard Flanaghan and Randolph Stow, I thought to turn back to Canadian writers of the post war era.
Hugh MacLennan came to mind, and this was a random pick. He's more known for books like 'Two Solitudes' and 'The Watch that Ends the Night' but I put those aside for later, and grabbed this lesser work. Or so I thought.
First, this is just a great story, period.
Second, MacLennan is a master at characterization and developing motive, in the English classical tradition (Eliot, James, Conrad, etc.): a small town doctor, an aspiring but mentally and physically bruised boxer, the wife he left behind, their son, an aspiring suitor, and various characters in the Cape Breton town, none of them less than colourful.
Third, the book evocatively depicts Cape Breton of the mid twentieth century: the fisheries, the mines, the workers, the busy and gritty doctors and the weekend fights.
I was unsure about the narrator and he was a bit wobbly at the very first, but overall this is masterfully done. No vocal tics for the straight narrative, and dialogue well rendered in each voice and shifting marvellously in and out of each character.
If you do stumble across this title, you really can't go wrong.

Incredible on many levels

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