It’s not every day you get to watch an author read their own work aloud; passages that moved you, entertained you or changed your way of thinking entirely, spoken by the person who conjured them from their very imaginations and experiences. That’s why, each month, the Service95 Book Club creates space for authors to bring their work to life, performing an extract of their choice from the book Dua hand-selected to be her Monthly Read.
For February, it’s The Son of Man by Jean-Baptiste Del Amo, a novel that covers the questions on masculinity, the patriarchy and inherited violence that permeate social media threads, group chats and newspaper columns right now. It follows an absent father who returns to take his wife and son to live off-grid in the remote mountains of the French Pyrenees.
Below, the author shares an excerpt from his novel, in which the father figure – one of the book’s three protagonists – tells his son about his own dark idea of love: “If there is one thing the father tells his son, in that erratic monotone, one thing a man cannot endure, it is to be betrayed in love.”
In his conversation with Dua (which you can find here), Jean-Baptiste shares that he wrote The Son of Man as a very particular story of a father and son, that is also relatable to “all the fathers and all the sons.” In this reading video, Jean-Baptiste’s chosen excerpt captures how deeply a father’s words can shape a son’s understanding of love, loyalty and masculinity.
Whether or not you’ve read the novel, this passage offers a powerful insight into the psychological force at the heart of the book. It also gives you a taste of Jean-Baptiste’s writing, particularly in his vivid descriptions of the natural world. Get ready to be drawn in...
Watch Jean Baptiste’s full reading video here, or listen to it as a podcast here.
There’s More – Delve Deeper Into The Son Of Man With The Service95 Book Club...
- WATCH Dua’s interview with Jean-Baptiste
- LISTEN to their conversation with the Service95 Book Club podcast
- BOOKMARK the stories that inspired Jean-Baptiste while writing the novel
- PRESS PLAY on the songs to listen to while reading The Son Of Man
- DISCOVER 5 works by contemporary French authors to read next
