Moving book blurs fact and fiction

THE SON Michel Rostain Tinder Press

For any parent, the loss of a child is devastating. Writing about it may be cathartic as French opera stage director Michel Rostain demonstrates in The Son, translated from the French by Adriana Hunter.

Lion, Rostain's son, died of meningitis at the age of 21, and the book blurs fact and fiction in an increasingly popular genre, biofiction.

The story is told by Lion, sometimes with humour, as he reflects on his life, death and the reactions of his family, particularly his father.

Much obviously comes from Rostain's heart and is at times very moving but, in the end, it is difficult to accept the cover line that this is not a book about death but a book about life, unless the life is the author's rather than that of his dead child.

• Gillian Vine is a Dunedin journalist.

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