No Son of Mine by Jonathan Corcoran

I had the pleasure of reviewing Jonathan Corcoran’s short story collection, The Rope Swing, when it was first published in 2016, and I am excited to revisit Corcoran’s work in his memoir, No Son of Mine. Prompted by his mother’s death during the early days of the pandemic, at a time when Corcoran describes being confined to his New York apartment with a Covid infection and listening to the sirens, aware of the “bodies in freezer trucks just down the block” (8), Corcoran examines loss and love, estrangement and empathy, through the lens of his relationship with his mother.

Her death is neither the beginning nor the end for Corcoran, this woman, this mother, who disowned him on his twentieth birthday after learning he was gay. No Son of Mine is a heart-rending, circuitous journey through Corcoran’s youth, early adulthood, career, marriage, and everything in between, wherein his mother is a vicious, violent presence, even, and sometimes especially, in her absence. Yet there are times, mostly from his youth, when she is a confidante, a companion, loving in her way, and, most importantly, his. Corcoran struggles mightily with his enduring love for his mother even in the face of her rejection. “What do we owe our mothers? I suppose, at the very least, honesty. And maybe a chance to be heard” (69), Corcoran muses. 

Corcoran displays an almost extreme empathy for his mother, despite her ongoing abuse and her silences. “This was the curse, has always been the curse for a child—to begin to see the world with a clarity that your parents lack, to begin to see the underpinnings of their actions and choices” (81-82). And he describes the lack of empathy he encountered himself, in a position unfathomable to so many. “The word follows me everywhere I go. The dean says it’s unfathomable what happened to me, and my friends say it’s unfathomable that she would abandon me like that” (53). Corcoran’s story is an ongoing tug-of-war between empathy and ambivalence. 

Despite everything she has done, Corcoran tries desperately to understand her. He returns to the relationship, again and again. But that excruciating tension between wanting to forgive and being unable to forget remains. “At this point in our relationship, probably our third or fourth estrangement, it is, in fact, those very things that she has done, those very things that I fear she will continue doing, that are the point” (103). While he desperately wants her acceptance, wants her to attend his wedding, needs her to be the loving mother he deserves, he recognizes the impossibility and the tragedy in trying. And yet he still cannot stop. Corcoran projects a strong sense of grief, even before his mother’s death. He is “grieving life” (125).

In No Son of Mine, Corcoran cuts to the heart of familial estrangement, and his narrative will be achingly familiar to anyone who has experienced anything like it. When the people who are supposed to love us most in the world abandon and revile us, we cannot help but repeatedly cycle through grief and hope, empathy and ambivalence, forgiveness and remembering.

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Rebecca Biggio holds her Ph.D. in English from West Virginia University. She has taught writing and literature at several major universities. She currently lives with her family in Kentucky.