Ok I try not to pan a book unless I've read it cover to cover but this one isn't worth that agony. Several times I've set it aside with the intention of picking it up again with a fresh attitude but that hasn't helped.
The plot described in the blurb sounded right up my alley but this book (for me at least) fails to deliver in a spectacular way. I once remarked that Oedipus had really gouged his eyes out, not because he'd slept with his mother, but that he'd been faced with reading the collected works of Nathaniel Hawthorne. I really should have saved that bon mot for this stinker. At least this book involves a mother and son.
It's purported to be the tale of a young man who's teaching at a college, who's on his own for the first time and who's coming out and being pursued by a younger gayboy. I never got that far.
Though the story is centered on a young gay man as the protagonist, the author is a woman and the writing feels that way, Brand names and an inner voice much more prissy than the man is described.
Just a few examples... Asparagus in Prosciutto and Trout Bourguignonne & shit enoughbricks to rebuild Florence in the same sentence... What young man thinks like that?
Or describing his reasons for not coming out yet at home... It was like living with the Borgias on acid. At the same time he'd rather kiss a cobra on methamphetamines than hide behind a facade of normalcy by taking a girl to that odious ball.
It becomes very clear, very quickly that the autheress is more concerned with showing off how much she knows and how clever she is than with telling a cogent, enjoyable story.
I only got as far as chapter 7 (page 65) and the book may well improved somewhere beyond that point. I know that not every author can be everyone's "cup of tea" but I'd rather drink lye than read more of this woman's work.
The plot described in the blurb sounded right up my alley but this book (for me at least) fails to deliver in a spectacular way. I once remarked that Oedipus had really gouged his eyes out, not because he'd slept with his mother, but that he'd been faced with reading the collected works of Nathaniel Hawthorne. I really should have saved that bon mot for this stinker. At least this book involves a mother and son.
It's purported to be the tale of a young man who's teaching at a college, who's on his own for the first time and who's coming out and being pursued by a younger gayboy. I never got that far.
Though the story is centered on a young gay man as the protagonist, the author is a woman and the writing feels that way, Brand names and an inner voice much more prissy than the man is described.
Just a few examples... Asparagus in Prosciutto and Trout Bourguignonne & shit enoughbricks to rebuild Florence in the same sentence... What young man thinks like that?
Or describing his reasons for not coming out yet at home... It was like living with the Borgias on acid. At the same time he'd rather kiss a cobra on methamphetamines than hide behind a facade of normalcy by taking a girl to that odious ball.
It becomes very clear, very quickly that the autheress is more concerned with showing off how much she knows and how clever she is than with telling a cogent, enjoyable story.
I only got as far as chapter 7 (page 65) and the book may well improved somewhere beyond that point. I know that not every author can be everyone's "cup of tea" but I'd rather drink lye than read more of this woman's work.
