What
Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell, (2016) Picador - Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, New York.
What
Belongs to You a novel by Garth Greenwell was a sensation
upon its publication in 2016. It was included
among the most prominent publications’ lists of Best Books of the Year, won the
British Book Award for Debut of the Year and was a finalist for the
PEN/Faulkner Award.
The narrator, an American
English teacher in post-communist Bulgaria at the turn of the millennium, in
what we presuppose to be the modern era of openness and diversity in human
sexuality, finds himself virtually thrown back in time as he navigates the
capitol city in search of erotic encounters.
Eastern Europe during the communist era maintained and strictly enforced
the anti-homosexuality laws and attitudes promulgated by Church and State that
had existed for centuries. Bulgaria and
the other iron curtain nations did not experience the post-Stonewall revolution
and the burgeoning Gay Liberation Movement post-1969. By necessity our narrator closets himself
during his tenure in Eastern Europe.
Lack of freedom to live openly leads the young man, into the bowels of
the National Palace of Culture, where he finds that the men’s room has become a
mecca for anonymous hook-ups with young male prostitutes. There he begins a dangerous obsession with
Mitko, a Bulgarian prostitute who seemed to me almost an incarnation of
Proust’s femme fatale, Odette, in his novel In Search of Lost Time (aka Remembrance
of Things Past) playing upon the ardor of his suitors to extract goods and
promises. Proust’s Charles Swann will condemns
himself to a life outside society through his marriage to Odette, and our narrator
is aware that the game he plays with Mitko will put him beyond the bounds of
his own carefully constructed life in Bulgaria.
Much of the latter parts of the novel, center on the narrator’s struggles
to throw off his obsession with the young prostititute.
While the narrator is older
and highly educated, it is he who is the innocent, while Mitko young and
uneducated is worldly-wise, a master manipulator and adept at the machinations
of the trade. The protagonist’s desire
for the Mitko runs a parallel course to guilt at his own privilege. Fear of being exposed to his colleagues and
students exacerbated by extortion threats from Mitko nearly drive him mad. This is compounded by fear of contracting venereal
disease that Mitko exposed him to. While
in the west, syphilis and gonorrhea, are highly treatable conditions since the
advent of penicillin, and while not desirable, do not retain the stigma once
associated with them thanks to sexual education. In Bulgaria, our narrator's encounters with
medical personnel reveal that medicine readily available in the U.S. are far
less so in Eastern Europe, and that medical professionals reveal the ingrained
prejudices when dealing with patients, who present with sexually transmitted
diseases.
Greenwell’s prose are illuminating, engaging and create a visual image of a darkened city still awaiting its emergence into the modern world. Cloud covered, or snow-laden a heaviness descends on the city, as it does on the protagonist’s encounters. The fear and desire expressed by the narrator were palpable. Yet, never in the reading did I not want to continue and I longed for the liberation of the young man from this fearful world around and within.
Rating: 💖💖💖💖
Dancer
from the Dance by Andrew Holleran, (1978) William Morrow
and Company; (2001) First Perennial edition - HarperCollins Publishers.
A story very much of its
time and setting; a place many have forgotten or never knew. I fall in the latter category. Andrew Holleran, the pen name for the
celebrated author Eric Garber, takes the reader to that time (1970’s) post-Stonewall
and pre-AIDs epidemic. These heady days
when the Gay Liberation movement burst through into the public consciousness,
when the community began encouraging Gay men and women to come out of the
closet and take to the streets to demand that they be allowed to live their
lives without fear of discrimination or harassment. Holleran, in this novel focuses, not on the
movement that would lead to the elimination of discriminatory laws prohibiting
Gay people from employment, housing, and civil rights enjoyed by Heterosexuals,
but rather on the hedonism of the NYC club scene, the bathhouses and summers of
wild extravagant parties for hundreds at the Fire Island (NY) beach houses of
affluent members of the Gay community.
In satirical fantastical
dream-like prose, the narrator tells the tale of Malone and Sutherland, two Gay
men who spend days and nights seeking and sampling everything at a never-ending
erotic and mind-altering buffet.
Sutherland, a drag queen rescues Malone, following the abrupt, violent
end of his first homosexual relationship.
He then introduces his new charge to the carnival world of which he is
the barker. Before casting open the
closet door, Malone lived the life of privileged Waspdom, hiding his true
desires in fear that if found out he’d be cast out of his safe nest on the lofty
branch of the social strata. When
Malone eventually launches himself from his closeted life, he descends upon a new world eager and willing to indulge every desire.
Our protagonists live as if
it is Mardi Gras every day. They partake
in anonymous sex, drugs, alcohol and sleep it off and start all over again the
next night. NYC club life in the 70’s
and 80’s was to become extension of the Gay club scene. The beautiful and rich wanted to take part,
Gay or not. Within a decade after
Stonewall, the people regularly rounded up on police raids were now partying
openly among the rich and famous. While
the good times rolled it was a spectacle of glamour, style and youthful
beauty. Then like a brick through a
window the AIDs epidemic brought it to a screeching halt.
Holleran begins his novel as
a series of letters between friends, one of whom has removed himself to the
serenity of the Florida shores. They
gossip about the friends they knew and of the life that they have burned
themselves out on. Holleran indicated in
interviews that Dancer From the Dance
was written for the Gay community, especially those who lived the downtown NYC
club scene of the 1970’s. Following the
narrative can become difficult, especially keeping track of all the characters,
yet there is too much good writing not to push on to the end.
Since its debut in 1978, Dancer From the Dance, Holleran has
continued to be a prolific contributor to the LGBTQ canon. I came across a recent article in The New
Yorker about Holleran’s writings during the AIDs epidemic and the lessons that
we can glean during our current COVID-19 epidemic. Coincidentally, the article was written by
Garth Greenwell, whose book I reviewed above.
Here is the link.
Rating: 💖💖💖
The
Stranger’s Child by Alan Hollinghurst, (2012) Vintage
International - Random House, Inc.
From Man Booker Prize winning
author Alan Hollinghurst, an epic journey through the early days of the 20th
century up to our modern era examining the internal and external struggles of
Gay men in all echelons of British society.
The novel centers round the upper-middle class Sawle and the
aristocratic Valance families. United
through marriage and offspring, and through their connection with the WWI poet Cecil
Valance, who appeared to be a stand-in for Rupert Brooks and Siegfried
Sassoon. Cecil Valance, the love
interest of Daphne and George Sawle, enters the realm of legend and myth,
as the story proceeds. He ascends from
just another pampered aristocrat to a man who enters the collective British consciousness
as one of the leading romantic figures of the WWI era.
The
Stranger’s Child, an exploration of homosexuality in the 20th
century, the British class system and the life of two families, proved an
excellent choice. The reader has the
opportunity to meet George Sawle and his sister Daphne in their youth, middle
age and in their declining years. I was
delighted to see the development of the characters mirror in realistic fashion
the moments of youthful optimism and desire, thus illustrating the change in
character when we meet them well into their middle years, highly protective of
their inner selves and their personal history.
Finally, upon encountering them in their dotage, they exhibit the two
aspects oft seen in very old people; either revealing far too much or highly
suspect of anyone they encounter.
Into this mix of the highly privileged
and formally educated is tossed Peter Rowe, a working class closeted lad and
newest employee at Midland Bank in London.
The Midland Bank Manager, Mr. Keeping, suffering PTSD post-WWII,
experiences such intense anxiety that he requires companionship on his walks
home. And as such things happen, this
commonplace walk changes the course of Peter’s life. Arriving at the Keeping family residence, a
newly suburban home just beyond the bustling city, Peter encounters Mrs.
Keeping, who immediately marks him as working class and quickly relegates him
to servant status imploring him to perform some manual labor on her
behalf. Peter’s interaction with the
Keeping family, whose matriarch is none-other than Daphne Sawle’s daughter
begins his lifelong interest in the connection between Cecil Valance and Daphne
Sawle.
Although, I enjoyed this book immensely, some parts the story slowed a bit too much for my liking, and the number of characters mentioned was such, it would be good to have a reference page listing them all. That said,
Hollinghurst’s prose style is excellent and he does not waste the reader’s time
with old tropes and stereotypes, which I found refreshing. I will be adding more of Hollinghurst's works to my TBR.
Rating: 💖💖💖
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Bonus Book Review
Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler, (1941) The Macmillan Company; Unabridged Audiobook (2009) Recorded Books, Narrated by Frank Muller, 8 Hours and 14 Minutes; (2015) The Scribner Classics hardcover edition, Scribner - Simon & Schuster, Inc.
The political maelstrom
through which the U.S. has been plunged following the November 2020 elections
left many shaken and disillusioned. Few
of us alive today could have imagined the scenes we watched on January 6, 2021
from the seat of the U.S. government.
Americans have been taught the U.S. rests on a
rock solid foundation, a nation built on a shining hill and if there are those who seek its overthrow, they most certainly come from beyond our borders. Yet many times over these past weeks, I've heard Benjamin Franklin’s words repeated by the pundits. Franklin's warning across the centuries “We have a Republic, if you can keep it.” seems never more apt.
Launching into a
political classic from the last century seemed more than appropriate in our current days of disorientation. It was the
perfect time to read/listen to Koestler’s groundbreaking novel of the Stalinist
era Darkness at Noon. While we are far from the madness of 1930s Soviet Russia, it is always good to remember the lengths to which political madness can be plunged when extremism takes hold. In the darkness of a prison cell, the
once stalwart true-believer, communist revolutionary and party apparatchik, Rubashov, faces his own elimination at the direction of Number One.
Number One being Stalin, whose name is never spoken. He, who cannot be named, has consolidated all power
to himself, leaving no one to question his will or authority. This leaves comrades, who shared prison cells
in the days before the revolution and fought side by side to bring about revolution,
to trample each other in the rush to inform on one another to save their own lives.
Darkness lies not only in
the Stalinist period, but in the soul of the man, Rubashov, who must confront his
own inner demons and transgressions while pacing back and forth in the tiny prison
cell. As
he awaits his fate, Rubashov conducts his own criminal court where he stands
the defendant and accuses himself of disloyalty not to the State but to those
who trusted him, maybe even those who loved him. These figures in the past parade one by one
before him, as he re-examines his complicity in their deaths. Ultimately, Rubashov condemns himself for
these acts against the innocent, while still refusing to confess to the absurdly of concocted charges brought against him by the State. The dread, dankness and claustrophobia
experienced by Rubashov were often so vivid, I felt myself shiver.
The audible performance of
Frank Muller was superb. Later I purchased
the Scribner hardcover edition, as I felt the need to review at least the first third of
the book in print form. I do not re-read
many books but Darkness at Noon
will be an exception, as I believe there are still many underlying themes not
revealed to me in this first read through. Daphne
Hardy, Koestler’s companion, translated his foremost work into English and
managed to get it safely from occupied France to England in the midst of WWII. This act of courage, some 80 years ago,
shined a light on the crimes of the Stalinist era and provides us a
realistic depiction of authoritarian regimes.
Rating: 💖💖💖💖
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