The Hairdresser's Son
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International Dublin Literary Award-winning Gerbrand Bakker gives voice to the visceral power of family ties in a novel brimming with Knausgaardian detail When his wife tells him she is pregnant, Cornelis packs his bags and boards a plane--a day later he is dead. Now grown, Simon roams the barbershop his father left him, honing razors and polishing mirrors in a shop marked FERM . He sees his customers one by one, massaging scalps and shaving throats in an intimate, physical dance. There's only one customer whose presence in Simon's impeccable shop breaks this silent routine: the writer. Trimming the fine tips of the writer's eyebrows, Simon loses himself in a parallel life--one where he lives and grows old with the writer, shaping a crewcut around an "old, weathered face." The writer, looking for a life to fold into his next book, becomes entranced by the mystery surrounding Simon's father--in the patterns of their conversation, Cornelis's absence is renewed. As Simon begins to scour for the traces his father left behind, a carefully observed portrait of love and loneliness emerges. With subdued prose and bracing, sometimes pungent closeness, Gerbrand Bakker writes life itself into his characters.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:196277032X
ISBN13:9781962770323
Release Date:August 2025
Publisher:Archipelago Books
Length:220 Pages
Weight:0.81 lbs.
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