Publishers Weekly
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A man convinced he could be Bob Dylan’s son returns home to care for his ailing mother in Sussman’s gorgeous autobiographical debut. Evan Klausner, a 26-year-old aspiring writer, is devastated when his strong-willed mother, June, announces she has ovarian cancer, and he returns home to the Hudson Valley from London to take care of her. Over the course of the novel, he becomes fascinated by the stories she tells him while she recovers from chemotherapy, about her bohemian life in the Manhattan art world of the 1970s as a painter, actor, and lover and muse to Dylan, whom she last saw less than a year before Evan was born. When Evan asks if Dylan is his father, June is coy, and his imagination races. By the time Evan learns of June’s terminal prognosis, she only has weeks remaining. In poetic narration interwoven with Dylan’s lyrics, Evan expresses how the musician’s songs inspired him to lead a wandering and creative life. “Possibility coursed through me,” he remembers of being a teenager and hearing Dylan singing “I want you, I want you so bad” on a CD in his bedroom. At the novel’s heart, though, is Sussman’s intense portrait of a mother and son’s emotional bond. It’s a stunner. Agents: Peter Steinberg and Yona Levin, UTA. (Sept.)

Kirkus
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Losing Mom: heartfelt autofiction from a man who just may be Bob Dylan’s son. “‘Un-canny, the way you look like him. Bob Dylan. You know his music?’” As soon as you encounter the premise of Sussman’s debut novel, you will surely Google him, and see that his resemblance to the man who wrote “Girl From the North Country” is somewhere beyond uncanny. Sussman has also published an article inHarper’s Magazine that explains the real-life basis of the novel—his mother’s year-long relationship with Dylan and a later meeting nine months before he was born. He magicks this material into a gorgeous, emotionally thrilling first-person novel chronicling the death of the narrator Evan’s mother from cancer, a period during which she finally shares more of the truth about her connection with Dylan, as well as other stories of her life, some terrible and some amazing. All of this has been completely hidden from Evan till now, despite the fact that he and June were very close in his childhood. Their emotional intimacy was built on play-acting and storytelling, on King Arthur and Harry Potter (the Potter saga is a surprising and important touchstone throughout), and also fraught due to her stormy relationships with his stepfather and other men. Despite these romantic disappointments, and things far worse than disappointment, June persists in believing, and wanting her son to believe, that there is nothing holier than love. As the novel opens, she has called him in London—Evan has lived abroad since college—to tell him she has cancer, though she withholds the seriousness of her condition for most of the book, continuing to pursue both holistic and Western treatment. The night he arrives, she serves him an alfresco dinner of homegrown vegetables: “The eggplant lay gleaming on its browned back. Beets glowed blood red. Crisped collard and kale lay entangled in the baking tray. In the pan the bloomed popcorn was spiced and golden.” They recite poetry to each other to bless the meal. The love that swells beneath this scene, and every scene, will just about knock you over. Come for the riveting father-son mystery, stay for the most beautiful and moving mother-son story in recent memory. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Library Journal
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DEBUT In 2021, Sussman published a personal essay in Harper's Magazine theorizing that his father could be Bob Dylan. In addition to an uncanny resemblance, he knew that his mother had an affair with the iconic singer in 1974 and that she might have reconnected with Dylan a year before Sussman's birth. Sussman's searingly tender debut novel fictionalizes and deepens this account, to heart-rending effect. Aspiring writer Evan Klausner returns to his hometown to help his mother, June, a holistic therapist who has ovarian cancer. During her chemotherapy sessions, June fills in crucial blanks for Evan, recounting her past life as a young woman in New York City: acting with Stella Adler, painting with Norman Raeben, and serving as a muse for Bob Dylan. As the reality of June's condition sets in, Evan must decide if he should stop searching for what he could have gained from the father he might have had, in favor of fully embracing what he is about to lose with the mother he has. VERDICT This will be required reading for Dylanologists eager to see yet another side of their idol, but the heart of the story is the ferocious bond between a mother and son.—Michael Pucci