Sharply clever novel that labours under its self-inflicted conceit

& Sons

**By** David Gilbert

**Fourth Estate,** €21.40

**Reviewed by** Joanne Hayden

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With his second novel, David Gilbert is on familiar ground. Set in New York's Upper East Side, where Gilbert was raised, & Sons is a hyperconscious literary game as well as a story about fathers - biological, surrogate and figurative - and the monumental, often catastrophic, impact they have on their sons. As he celebrates and satirises contemporary New York, ...