There are no easy answers in Thrity Umrigar's 'Everybody's Son'

“I write to make sense of the world and to make sense of my own, often contradictory, emotions and feelings.” These words, taken from the home page of Thrity Umrigar’s website, offer both a guide and a warning to the potential reader of Everybody’s Son, which features nine-year-old Anton Vesper.

Umrigar’s sixth novel is a head-on exploration of the complex and explosive world of American race politics, of power and its abuse, of self-interest masquerading as altruism, of privilege and deprivation. That she has contradictory feelings about some or all of this is not surprising – and I can pretty well guarantee that potential readers will share some of that confusion both about the issues and her handling of them.