BOY FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY

Losing Mom: heartfelt autofiction from a man who just may be Bob Dylan’s son.

“‘Un­canny, the way you look like him. Bob Dylan. You know his music?’” As soon as you encounter the premise of Sussman’s debut novel, you will surely Google him, and see that his resemblance to the man who wrote “Girl From the North Country” is somewhere beyond uncanny. Sussman has also published an article in Harper’s Magazine that explains the real-life basis of the novel—his mother’s year-long relationship with Dylan and a later meeting nine months before he was born. He magicks this material into a gorgeous, emotionally thrilling first-person novel chronicling the death of the narrator Evan’s mother from cancer, a period during which she finally shares more of the truth about her connection with Dylan, as well as other stories of her life, some terrible and some amazing. All of this has been completely hidden from Evan till now, despite the fact that he and June were very close in his childhood. Their emotional intimacy was built on play-acting and storytelling, on King Arthur and Harry Potter (the Potter saga is a surprising and important touchstone throughout), and also fraught due to her stormy relationships with his stepfather and other men. Despite these romantic disappointments, and things far worse than disappointment, June persists in believing, and wanting her son to believe, that there is nothing holier than love. As the novel opens, she has called him in London—Evan has lived abroad since college—to tell him she has cancer, though she withholds the seriousness of her condition for most of the book, continuing to pursue both holistic and Western treatment. The night he arrives, she serves him an alfresco dinner of homegrown vegetables: “The eggplant lay gleaming on its browned back. Beets glowed blood red. Crisped collard and kale lay entangled in the baking tray. In the pan the bloomed popcorn was spiced and golden.” They recite poetry to each other to bless the meal. The love that swells beneath this scene, and every scene, will just about knock you over.

Come for the riveting father-son mystery, stay for the most beautiful and moving mother-son story in recent memory.