Fresh Air - For 'Severance' Star Adam Scott, Work & Life Can't Be Separated

Episode Date: January 31, 2025

The Apple TV+ drama series Severance is back for its second season. It's a dystopian take on work-life balance — where characters have their personal and professional lives surgically separated. He spoke with Ann Marie Baldonado in 2022 about the making of the series. Also, Justin Chang reviews one of this year's most talked-about Oscar nominees for Best Documentary Feature, No Other Land. It was directed by a collective of two Palestinian filmmakers and two Israeli filmmakers. Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Mothers and Sons by Adam Haslett.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Fresh Air, I'm David Bianculli. The hit drama series Severance, a sci-fi take on work-life balance, is now into its second season on Apple TV Plus after a long hiatus. Today, we feature our interview with Adam Scott, who stars in it. You may know him previously from his role

in Parks and Recreation, playing Ben Wyatt, government worker and love interest for Leslie Knope, played by Amy Poehler. He also was in the series Big Little Lies, recreation, playing Ben Wyatt, government worker and love interest for Leslie Knope, played by Amy Poehler. He also was in the series Big Little Lies and in the cult favorite Party Down. In Severance, as Mark S., he's a guy still grieving for his wife who died in a car accident years ago. Unable to return to work as a professor because of his grief, he decides to work for the company

Lumen, a mysterious conglomerate that performs a controversial surgery on some of its employees. Workers can choose to get a chip implanted in their brain that makes them forget about their personal lives when they're at work and their work lives when they're at home. In the current season, there's some evidence that Mark's wife may not be dead after all, which only reinforces his desire to quit the company that severed his consciousness. But his sister Devon, played by Jen Tullock, urges him to stay put and investigate further. Devon, what are you doing? You remember I identified her, right? Yes, Mark. I saw her body. Yeah, I know. My thing is, if we could just get like a half step more

confirmation, then it's not going to be something that continues to haunt us. You know what I mean? Us? Yes. She was my family too, Mark. Yeah, but she was my wife. I know, but you're not the only one her death affected.

Oh, really? It affected you? Yes. Did you have to tell her parents that she was dead? How about her students? How about this? Did your sheets smell like her for weeks afterwards? Ben Stiller co-created Severance and directs a lot of the episodes. The series also stars Patricia Arquette, John Turturro, and Christopher Walken. We're going to listen to the interview from 2022 that Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Baldonado did with Adam Scott. Adam Scott, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you, Anne-Marie.

It's obvious that, you know, office work culture has changed. Like, pre-pandemic, there was this fear that, you know, because of technology, people would be working all the time, you know, leaving little time for outside life. And with the pandemic, those lines between the two have gone kind of beyond blurred. And people are really reconsidering what work means, how much time one should work, how much of their lives should be devoted to it. You know, this show goes dramatic in the other way, like separating the two. And because it's so much about office culture,

is that something that appealed to you and everyone who works on the show, thinking through those issues? Yeah. While we were making Severance, we shot it in New York. My family is in Los Angeles. So it was right in the heart of pre-vaccine pandemic. So it was tough, I didn't get to see them very much, but it was sort of the Wild West

as far as just trying to make this show and keep everyone from getting sick. And so everybody was really sealed off and isolated. I would shoot the show, get in a van, drive for 40 minutes to this apartment I was staying in, sit there by myself and eat, sleep, get up, get back in a van, go there, shoot this crazy show where there's all this isolation and it's sort of about this separation from work and life. And so it all started forming into this one thing in my head and in my memories of it.

The production design of the show, the look of the show really leads to this feeling of strangeness, creepiness, also isolation. For example, your character Mark lives in this sterile corporate apartment in this snowy landscape, and that's his outside life. And the offices are very stark, they're empty but symmetrical, it's all fluorescent lights and there are so many hallways. There's

this one scene when you first get to the office where you're walking through hallways and I timed it, it's like 90 seconds, it's like the longest walking in a hallway sequence ever and you know, it sort of lends to this kind of weird, eerie feeling. So the look of the show certainly helps build this dread. What's it like filming in that environment? It's really interesting. Just as far as that first walk down the hallway in the first episode,

we shot that near the end of the very end of the shoot. Nine, ten months in, we ended up shooting that. And I remember after a couple of takes, Ben pulled me aside and he said, hey, after about a minute, why don't you check your watch? And so I do. And he used that he put that in the show and I think it's a little bit of a nod to yes this is taking a while we are going on this full journey down the hallway and they built all of those. Always on this stage and you did have to walk through them in order to get to the office. in order to get to the office. But they were also constantly moving them around. And depending on what we're shooting, they're sliding the hallways in one direction or the other and creating new patterns. So more often than not, I would get lost trying to get to the office set and many times would

have to just stop and call out and wait for someone to come find me because it all looks exactly the same, just like it does on the show. And you can just sort of lose your bearings quickly in there. I've read about some of the actors who inspired you when you were younger. And you mentioned Christopher Walken. And he just plays such an interesting, fun character

in Severance. Can you talk about working with him? Oh man, you know, I couldn't believe it when Ben told me he was gonna be in the show and he and John Totoro are very close friends and so John really called him up and encouraged him to do it. I mean, he's such a profound presence on screen for my whole life as far as long as I've

been into movies and TV shows, which is essentially all I thought about and was interested in as a kid and teenager and adult. We had a scene where we're all down in his part of the of Lumen. Anyway, it was my first real scene with Christopher Walken and I was pretty freaked out because I have to give this speech in front of he, John Totoro and the rest of the cast that's in that scene, Zach Cherry and Britt Lauer. But it was, you know, Christopher Walken and John Turturro that I was a little freaked out about giving a speech in front of. And it was, you know, one of the first scenes I had with the two of them. And all day, I've been feeling like I haven't figured it out.

It's a relatively simple, not super long speech, but I didn't, it wasn't coming out right. It wasn't, it just wasn't feeling like it was falling into place. There just was something off about it. It just was not working. And I was embarrassed because these guys are watching me all day do like a C plus, right? And I could not get over the hump. I couldn't figure it out. And I forget what it was, but something about it just made sense. And maybe it was the fact

that I was doing it all day, but it finally kind of fell into place. And at least it's not like I go back and watch it and think it's incredible or anything, but something about it just made sense and it came out and the ball at least fell into the pocket, but I was still unsure about it. And after we finished shooting, we were back in this other room just sort of chit chatting. And I remember Christopher Walken walked up behind me

and just grabbed my elbow as he was walking by and sort of just gave it a bit of a squeeze and a shake and like a hand on the shoulder. And I just took it as this, I guess a moment of approval or of a good job maybe, that's how I took it. And I can't tell you what that meant to me. Just that little moment from him was kind of everything. I'll never forget it.

In the first episode of the series, your character is crying. He's weeping in his car before going into the office. And at first we don't know what's causing him that grief, but we do find out as the episodes go on that his wife was killed in a car accident. The show's also about how a person deals with grief. And at one point, it comes out that when your character's

wife died, Mark first tries to go back to work as a professor after three weeks, and he couldn't do it. And that's part of the reason why he chose to work at this company and you know get the severance procedure done. I recently lost my father and I had to make that calculation. I'm sorry. Thanks. But you know it's it's a calculation that so many people have to make and it was the three weeks thing because I think that maybe that's maybe what people think is the right amount of weeks, but how much time it takes and when it's time to focus back on work

or on something else. And if this is too personal, just let me know. I read that you lost your mother shortly before the pandemic, before filming Severance. And I don't know, this show kind of deals with the idea of the proper amount of time or the proper way to deal with grief. That's right. Yeah. My mom died on March 5th, 2020. And so it was...

Right before everything changed. Right before. Yeah. And, you know, she passed away and then we quickly went into lockdown. So, I mean, we didn't have a memorial for her till just this past December. And I think, you know, a lot of people have gone through that as far as sort of putting stuff like this on hold. For me, you know, her death was world changing in the sense that the thing I didn't, you know, she was sick, she had ALS, and so we knew what was coming there for a couple of years. It was pretty quick, but you know, we knew it was coming, but then this moment it happens, what I didn't expect,

and I think people who have lost a parent, you may understand what I mean. The moment it happens, everything shifts. There's sort of a tectonic shift internally that just, it's like a switch going off where, and what I realized was, with a parent, it's like half of your view out the window. It's half of what you do things for.

You're always thinking, oh, what's my mom gonna think about this? Or whether you're a little kid or you're a grownup. She was a incredible mother. So anyway, I don't know if I'm articulating that right. And I don't know if that was your experience with your father, but losing a parent is sort of is a huge event.

There's no other feeling like it. But she passed away and then we went into lockdown and I had my kids and my wife here we were in the house and they really cushioned the blow in a lot of ways. You know, we were together and supporting each other and going through this together and they really, really helped me through it. And then that October, when I went to New York to do the show, the second I walked into the apartment

and put my bags down and I was by myself, I realized I hadn't fully grieved and come to terms with my mom's death. And I had that in front of me and nothing but this time by myself to do it. And that's, you know, what I slowly but surely did over all that time by myself, either in this apartment or at work. And I feel like the show was certainly part of that process. You've said that your mom was a big influence on you and exposed you to movies and comedy as a kid. What were the movies and TV shows that were important to you growing up?

Yeah, you know, she brought me to a revival theater in Santa Cruz to see Monty Python and the Holy Grail when I was probably like eight years old or something. And I couldn't believe that someone actually made something like this. And I remember we were in the front row because it was packed and the scene where is it John Cleese who gets all of his limbs chopped off I'm you know committing a comedy felony here by not remembering. Oh yes, it is him. In that scene, I remember laughing so hard, I stumbled out of my seat, out into the, since we were in the front row,

there's all that space on the floor. And I just remember like stumbling out there because I just couldn't contain myself, I couldn't believe this was happening. And my mom grabbing me and pulling me back into my seat. And it was just so outrageous and so funny. And, and I remember my dad sitting me down and showing me jaws and like, this is a good movie.

Look at this. And also for me, you know, seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark was a big moment. And that's really the moment I think I thought, this is something I would want to do at some point. And I wasn't even thinking in terms of acting. It was more just like, that. I want to do that. That looks really, really fun.

So it just sort of was something after school, instead of, I would go to the video store, I would ride my bike to the video store, not to rent a movie, but just to read the boxes. I would just spend an hour in there reading the boxes and the dates they came out and who did the cinematography and who was the director, you know, all of that stuff. I just loved it.

A lot of people know you and love you from your role as Ben Wyatt on the show Parks and Recreation that ran for seven seasons and you're in six of them, or a little bit of that second season. And you know, love for that show has just grown over time. Let's play a scene from Parks and Recreation. This is from the fourth season. And speaking of themes of work, in this scene,

Ben, your character is out of work. He just resigned because he started dating Leslie, no, played by Amy Poehler. And your character is a guy who likes to work. And so you're a little bit spiraling, not knowing what to do with your time. You're wearing your Letters to Cleo t-shirt. You're a little bit disheveled.

Never a good sign for a man. And your friend, Chris Trager, played by Rob Lowe, comes to see you because he's a little bit worried. What's up, Chris? Come on in, man. I already did. So, how you been? How you doing?

How are you? Great, man. I already did. So, how you been? How you doing? How are you? Great, actually. I'm just learning how to make a calzone. Or as you Americans like to say, calzones. Do you want one? No, I find calzone fatty and unnecessary. So you've hit a bit of a rough patch and I care about you. So I just want to make sure that you're doing okay.

Chris, honestly, I'm great. I'm just exploring whatever fun activity pops into my brain. But check this out. I'm teaching myself how to do claymation videos. Isn't this just so cool? It is so cool. Ben is massively depressed and he needs my help. That's a scene from Parks and Recreation. Now, people who watch the show know that there are some funny character traits thrown in there. I think this is maybe the first Calzone reference. Maybe?

Yeah. Maybe. And you know, your character, you're usually the straight man in scenes, but in this one you're a little bit wacky. And I've read that the writers of Parks and Rec really use the actors and lean into their strengths when they're building the character. What is it about you that gets written into Ben? You know, a character you played for many years and there are these, you know, this long like theme that Ben is really nerdy, like Leslie buys him a replica of the throne from Game

of Thrones, like that's just one of the ways. But so what's the bleed there between you and the character? Yeah, I don't know. You know, Mike and the writers were just so great. It was so fun every week getting to crack open Parks and Rec script and see what was in store for all of us, because it was always something fun. And, you know, Ben was the straight man for, you know, a lot of the show.

And his quirks ended up being really strange and really fun. One of them was he's deathly afraid of cameras and whenever he gets on camera He starts losing his equilibrium and that was sort of I guess that was the first one. He just gets really freaked out If there are cameras around I and thinks there's like a bird in the room and then another one is his love for calzones and his. Massive depression that comes on if he has nothing to to keep him busy.

And his you know star wars and game of thrones obsessions were were other ones. I don't know where those first couple came from, but I was just delighted to play them. They were, it was always just so much fun. We're listening to the interview of Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Baldonado recorded with Adam Scott in 2022. He stars in the Apple TV Plus series, Severance, which just began season two after a long hiatus.

We'll hear more of their conversation after a break. Also, Justin Chang reviews the new film No Other Land, which has been nominated for an Oscar for best documentary feature. And Maureen Corrigan reviews Mothers and Sons, the new novel by Adam Hazlett. I'm David B. and Cooley, and this is Fresh Air. Here's some news that really stinks.

Garbage is responsible for 20% of planet-warming methane emissions. That's why all week, here and now, is looking at ways people are cutting back on waste. Robot dogs hiking landfills, textile recyclers melting down old clothes, dumpster divers scoring big, and builders deconstructing homes instead of demolishing them. You can hear all that by following our podcast. It's called Here and Now, Anytime. Your turn to comedy came with a role in the movie Step Brothers, which came out in 2008. How did you get that part? It kind of changed the course of your career.

Oh my God, it completely did. I have Adam McKay and Will Ferrell to thank for that. And Allison Jones. The casting director. The casting director, Allison Jones, she's great. She cast me in this pilot in like 96, that really kind of kept me afloat for a while and Anyway, she's great. She's like the best and if you look her up, you'll see she's responsible

She's cast a lot of some of your favorite man She's great. Let's play a scene from that movie. So you play Derek He's a successful businessman with a family an unhappy family with two kids And your brother is Will Ferrell and your mother is played by Mary Steenburgen And she just got married to Richard Jenkins who whose son is John C. Reilly What a cast. I know it's great. The Will Ferrell and John C Reilly characters are like these man-children.

They kind of, like, they're not successful, but you are this yuppie, douchey guy. And in this scene, you're talking to Richard Jenkins for the first time, who's very impressed by you, and you're talking about selling his house. Let me ask you this, Bob. Why wait two years? Well, I gotta make more money. Okay, well, look, I hear you, believe me. But what if I were to tell you that I could sell this house for 30% above market right now? That'd be great. Yeah.

Could you do it? In a heartbeat, Robbie. You know what? I'd even do it for Four-Fifths Commish. Oh, that'd be fantastic. Yeah. That'd be fantastic. Yeah. Oh my god.

No, it would be kick-ass, bro. Oh man. Right there. Oh. That's a scene be kick ass, bro. Oh, man. Right there. Oh. That's a scene from the movie Step Brothers. Now, you know, you, now a few times, like also on The Good Place, you play this, like, bro type, this douchey bro type. Why are you so good at it?

I don't know. I've always thought that those guys are so funny. I love watching an overconfident idiot, but an overconfident idiot who's also deeply unpleasant just gets me excited. I think it's so funny. Also, I feel like too often those are the guys running the world and making fun of them in a movie or a TV show is kind of a fun poke.

You talked about the difference between doing the kind of stuff you're doing before Step Brothers. For example, you're on an HBO show called Tell Me You Love Me. And then you did this movie, you know, surrounded by all these comedy people. And it was such, at the time, you say it was such a big difference. Can you talk about the difference

of, you know, filming more dramatic shows and then entering this world of comedy? Entering into the world of comedy, that was a new thing. Like, ooh, this is gonna be really fun and silly and stupid today, I can't wait. But the thing that, the real value I got out of working with those guys at that point

that I hadn't experienced before was the sort of anarchy of how they work. And I hadn't seen anyone do it before, which was, let's turn the camera on and let's do a couple takes where we do scripted versions, where we play out the scene as scripted. But after one or two of those, we're just gonna let it go and who cares? Let's just try a bunch of stuff. And if it doesn't work, fine, we won't use it. And that was just so freeing and fun. And I was terrible at it for you know four-fifths of the filming

of stepbrothers and it was wasn't until the very end that I was finally starting to get the hang of of it and how those guys work but that was a game changer just in my brain and I tried to bring that energy to other stuff I did from there on out, whether it's dramatic or comedic, as far as just trying stuff and trusting that the best option wins, it just loosened me up and I needed to be loosened up. I wanna ask about Party Down, which is a show that also kind of put you on the comedy

map and you got that show after Step Brothers and a couple other comedy roles. It's about a group of caterers in LA who, you know, begrudgingly work at parties, but most of them want to make it, maybe all of them want to make it in the entertainment industry. It ran for two seasons, but there is a revival. And I believe you just finished shooting the third season last month. And it was a huge, you know, it was a cult hit, and everyone's so excited that there's this third season.

I want to play a clip from the show. It's from the first episode, and you are talking to another one of the people who works for the catering company, played by Lizzie Kaplan, who ends up being your love interest in the show. But you're talking for the first time. So do you act?

Well, I look familiar. You do. And you smoke parliaments. I dabbled. Are you a... A professional waiter? I'm not. No. No. I'm a comedian. I figured that my natural hilariousness would've dipped you off by now.

Wait a minute. Were you the... were you that guy? Yes I was. You were! You were totally that guy. That is Bananas. I remember that. Yeah. I remember you. Yeah.

What are you doing working here? Well, you remember me from anything else? That's a scene from the first episode of Party Down. Your character Henry was a guy who's trying to make it as an actor and he has one commercial with a catch phrase. At the time, did the show feel autobiographical? Did it feel close to your experience? Yeah, I think that we all on the show, the entire cast had similar feelings

as our characters, we all kind of felt a little beaten down by show business in a way, we were all, you know, making a living doing this, but had kind of had, you know, a series of near misses and just kind of made our way through and all kind of really felt the show pretty deeply, I think. And immediately connected with the material and with each other and just had the greatest time. And I think, you know, at the time when we were making those first two seasons, no one was watching it or really even knew what it

was. We couldn't really even get reviewed. It was so sort of invisible. And so, but we didn't care. We just thought what we're doing is special and just did it for ourselves and for each other and it was so fun. And part of it was we kind of thought no one would ever see this. That's the overall feeling that we had. And so we just went for it. And yeah, it was a really special time making that show.

What was it like going back and shooting the series that wrapped, like you said, 12 years ago? It was so strange at first because it's a significant amount of time, 12 years, good Lord, you know? And we're all there in our wardrobe and looking at each other and I remember shooting a scene in that first episode back and looking at Megan Mullally and Jane Lynch and Ken Marino and Martin Starr and Ryan Hansen

and just kind of marveling at how much I miss these people, but also how much I miss these characters. They're so crazy and funny. It was just such a happy. We'd made six episodes and did a quit, you know, six weeks. It was just the happiest time. It was so much fun. We just finished like two weeks ago.

It was just a blast. And I think the episodes are really special and fun, and people are going to enjoy them. Well, Adam Scott, thank you so much for joining us. ADAM SCOTT Thank you, Anne-Marie. It was a real pleasure. BALDIMOTO Adam Scott spoke to Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Baldinado in 2022. Season two of Severance is streaming weekly on Apple TV+. Coming up, Justin Chang reviews No Other Land, which has been nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. It's a collaboration between a team of Israeli

and Palestinian filmmakers. This is Fresh Air. One of this year's most talked about Oscar nominees for Best Documentary Feature is No Other Land. The film was directed by a collective of two Palestinian filmmakers and two Israeli filmmakers, and it chronicles the Israeli military's demolition of Palestinian homes in the West Bank. No Other Land begins playing in New York today. Here is Justin's review.

No Other Land isn't just the most powerful non-fiction film I saw in 2024. It also had one of the year's more remarkable off-screen narratives. The movie brings us into Masafir Yata, a community of Palestinian villages in the southern West Bank, which is being bulldozed by the Israeli military to make room for a tank training ground. Since it premiered early last year, the film has won numerous prizes at international festivals and from American critics groups. Recently, it received an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature.

For all its acclaim, though, no other land has yet to find an official U.S. distributor. That's both surprising and not surprising, given the industry's anxiety when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the directness with which this movie confronts it. Even so, no other land will be playing select theatres across the country, over the next month at least, and it deserves to be widely seen. It began shooting in 2019 and wrapped in October 2023, and so it feels in some ways like a pre-October 7th time capsule of the West Bank. It was directed by a team consisting of two Palestinian filmmakers, Basel Adra and Hamdan Balal, and two Israeli filmmakers, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Sor.

During the production, Basel, an activist and journalist who grew up in Masafir Yatta, became good friends with Yuval, a Jerusalem-based journalist who was covering the demolitions. Their relationship provides the movie's dramatic core. Part of the unexpected charm of No Other Land is that it sometimes plays like a Verite buddy movie, as Basel and Yuval navigate the initial awkwardness of their cross-cultural friendship. Yuval pitches in with efforts to rebuild homes, taking some good-natured ribbing for not being the handiest of helpers. When Yuval complains that his articles about the conflict aren't getting enough clicks,

Basel gently calls him out. You are enthusiastic like you want to end the occupation in ten days, he says. This has been going on for decades. Nonetheless, Basel knows the importance of the role that journalism can play, and his and Yuval's combined efforts do succeed in drawing international media attention. You can hear their voices speaking out in this montage of English language interviews from the film. Basel speaks part way through, and we hear Yuval at the end of the clip. This is the story of Basel Adra.

A post from Basel Adra. Basel, thank you so much for being with us today. Follow you closely on Instagram. He spent years documenting Israeli efforts to evict Palestinians living in Masafir Yatta. There's a hate from them toward me just because I take my phone or my camera and go film them when they're doing like this crime. I want to talk to you for a second about the Safir Yatta. Forced evictions and demolitions in the Safir Yatta. Safir Yatta. Safir Yatta. Over 2,500 Palestinians are facing forced expulsion.

As an Israeli, it's very, very important for me to stress that I don't think we can have security if Palestinians do not have freedom. One of the major figures in No Other Land is Basel's father, Nasser, who has been arrested numerous times for protesting, an activist legacy that he has now passed on to his son. Basel feels ambivalent about inheriting that legacy, and the exhaustion of having to spend your whole life fighting to protect your home. The footage shot by Basel and his colleagues nonetheless shows just how important that fight is.

We see Palestinian families frantically evacuating mere minutes before their homes are destroyed, then moving their possessions into nearby caves. We see farm animals wandering in confusion from their demolished coupes and pens, and children playing amid the ruins, as children in war zones often do. Sometimes Basel is in front of the camera, marching in a protest or at one point screaming as he's dragged on the ground by IDF soldiers. Often he's behind the camera. He keeps filming even amid the chaos, including one gut-wrenching moment when a Palestinian man is shot at point-blank range by an Israeli settler. At one point, Basel says, this is a story about power. And we see how that power plays out in different ways.

The filmmakers include footage from years earlier, when then-UK Prime Minister Tony Blair visited the region. He spent just seven minutes touring Masafir Yatah, but that was enough to get Israel to call off demolitions in the area. There's also a power differential, of course, between Basel and Yuval. When no other land won two awards last February, at the Berlin International Film Festival, the filmmakers took the stage together, and Yuval said in his acceptance speech, in two days we will go back to a land where we are not equal.

And he added that this inequality has to end. How it could end is not a question that no other land can answer, but as an example of Palestinian-Israeli collaboration in action, Basel and Yuval and the vital movie they've made, give us reason to hope. Justin Chang is a film critic for The New Yorker. He reviewed the new documentary No Other Land, now playing at the Film Forum in New York.

It opens in select theaters throughout the country in February. I'm sorry. Coming up, Maureen Corrigan reviews Mothers and Sons, the new novel by Adam Haislett. His books have twice been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. This is Fresh Air. Adam Haislett has written two novels and one short story collection, all of them best sellers. Haislett has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize twice. Our book critic Maureen Corrigan says Hazlett's new novel, Mothers and Sons, will likely be another contender for all the glittering prizes. Here is her review.

Dreary do-gooders, a mother who runs a women's retreat center in Vermont, a 40-year-old son who represents asylum seekers and lives alone in a studio apartment in Brooklyn where the air is redolent of depression and earnestness. These are not the kind of fictional characters I'd ordinarily want to usher the New Year in with, but Adam Hazlett gives me little choice. His latest novel, Mothers and Sons, is too beautifully written to pass over, too smart about how secrets feed on time, perversely taking up more room in our lives as the years go by.

We first meet Peter Fisher, the adult lawyer's son, in the midst of one of his overwhelming work days. His job, as Peter ruefully sees it, is to force his clients, people who've experienced violence in other countries, to go over and over the worst thing that ever happened to them. Peter then shapes their harrowing and often convoluted stories into a narrative that will hopefully persuade a judge to grant them asylum. A gay man, Peter limits himself to sporadic hookups that don't interfere with his work, work, work. Occasionally, Peter finds himself thinking back to a question

he was asked by an older lawyer at his long-ago job interview. What if, in the big picture, you aren't actually helping? What if you're a bureaucrat in an endless moral disaster, but if you walk away, the disaster will be a tiny bit worse. Will you still do it? Peter didn't know then, and doesn't know now, what the value of his work is in the big picture of things. That is, until a new client, a 21-year-old gay Albanian man seeking asylum on the grounds of his sexual orientation pushes Peter into a crisis. While meeting with him, Peter feels a sudden deep fatigue, strong as a potion. He subsequently locks himself out of his apartment twice and experiences vertigo. A memory is forcing its way to the surface that

impels Peter to contact his mother, Anne. She's the woman who runs that retreat center. Anne and Peter have been quietly distanced for decades, ever since she left Peter's father for her current partner, a woman. But as it turns out, the estrangement between this mother and son is rooted in something much more devastating. I fear I'm flattening mothers and sons into a melodrama when instead it's Hazelett's appreciation of the all-too-human mess of life that makes his writing so arresting, his characters and storylines so authentic. Midway through the novel, Hazelett bends the narrative back in time to Peter's adolescence,

an era when coming out felt riskier, especially to Peter himself. Remembering the night he first had sex with another man, an indifferent stranger, the adult Peter thinks to himself, how full of shame it is to be lonely. Hazelett scatters such sentences throughout this novel, sentences that can make you stop and go down emotional rabbit holes of your own. Another one of Hazelett's triumphs here is the way he makes the work his two main characters do so engrossing. Both Peter and Anne, who's a former priest turned lay counselor, are engaged in the hard work of listening.

Here are samplings of Anne's thoughts during an extended scene where she and two of her co-workers listen to a hospital chaplain describe how burned out she is. It was in these moments, after a person finished her first unburdening of why she had sought out the center, that the urge to soothe came most strongly to Anne. But to speak immediately would be to glide over the heaviness in the room, in this case a story about the passage of time and the aging of a vocation. People barely had room to grieve the loss of others, let alone pieces of themselves, and yet unmoored, such fragments were bound to haunt. Mothers and Sons is an intricate, compelling novel about the

power of stories and especially about the need to let go of those stories that keep people stuck. Maybe in that sense, it's a fitting novel for the new year after all. Maureen Corrigan is a professor at Georgetown University. She reviewed Mothers and Sons by Adam Hazlett. On Monday's show, the difficulty of confronting death when it's your adolescent child who's dying. Even some in the medical field don't talk about death

realistically with child patients or their families. When is hope helpful and when is it just denial? We talk with Sarah Wildman of the New York Times. Her daughter died of cancer at age 14. I hope you can join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller.

Sam Brigger is our managing producer. Our senior producer today is Roberta Shorrock. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Anne Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Theresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Challener, Susan Yaccundy, Anna Bauman, and Joel Wolfrey. Our digital media producer is Molly C.B. Nesper. For Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley, I'm David B. Inculli.