The Hairdresser’s Son

By: Gerbrand Bakker

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Synopsis: International Dublin Literary Award–winning Gerbrand Bakker gives voice to the visceral power of family ties in a novel brimming with Knausgaardian detailWhen 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 FERMÉ. 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.