It’s Too Late for Talk: A review of David Gilbert’s & Sons

If the stylish brilliance of recent novels by Rachel Kushner, Jess Walter, and Peter Heller has been hinting at a new golden age of American prose, then David Gilbert's ambitious, sprawling, and altogether masterful second novel, & Sons, confirms it.

There it is, a lead-in as straightforward and declarative as any you'll come across. (I've even provided italics so the sedulous publicists at Random House need not skim further for their pull quote.) Why? Because Gilbert's novel itself is by turns challenging and multilayered, weird and hilarious, dazzling and flawed, and attempting to sort it out in a critical light will take a little time. But hang with me, because & Sons is more than worth the effort...