Prospero's Son

"An affecting memoir. . . . Thoughtful and deeply felt . . . an intellectually and emotionally satisfying reading experience."

"I couldn't put this book down. 'Memoir' doesn’t begin to do it justice. Prospero’s Son is a beautifully observed and often haunting reflection about how we get here and what we leave behind."

"An absorbing and moving book, combining a scholar’s thoughts on the force of reading, especially reading in childhood, with episodes in a personal memoir, an intricate texture of stories and anecdotes that track the author's education into life, into its forms of theater and forms of magic--often failed theater, failed magic. For all the power that he attributes to story-telling, Lerer knows its costs, knows that there are moments when stories, too, fail, or trap us, or ask to be revised, re-seen. It is a beautifully composed work, beguiling in its unfolding, weaving and reweaving its threads of attention, recollection, and allusion. After two readings, the book continues to surprise."

"Prospero's Son glitters like one of the gems that fascinated Seth Lerer as a child. After this riveting read, with its lovingly chosen details and ever-inventive ways of recreating the author’s life, I feel chastened and somehow unsettled.  It is as if he has shared his life and yet remained inviolate, for he writes these pages with an aura of calm, exquisitely titrating the emotional distance at each moment with delicacy--and yet pain seeps through.  Like the rain. . . .  I could not put it down. The book works: It casts a spell."