A beautifully written, character-driven coming-of-age story that subverts clichés of queer literature.
A young man comes of age in the 1970s amid the camp and glamor of Atlanta’s underground drag scene in Currier’s novella.
“This is not a story about coming out,” asserts Billy Goodman, the narrator of this story, but it isa tale of a kind of close-knit community that one doesn’t often see in fiction. It begins with the small-town, blue-collar college student protagonist transferring to Atlanta during his sophomore year to pursue the literary arts and find a sense of community. A chance experience as a chorus member in a production of the musical Hello, Dolly! introduces him to David, the show’s choreographer and lead dancer. Through him, Billy becomes part of the local musical theater and drag scenes, where he discovers a passion for performance and comes to terms with his long-buried attraction to men. Billy spends a year frequenting drag clubs, gay bars, and bathhouses, falling in love with a few select men and gaining considerable sexual experience. He befriends the Spectacular Sisters, a group of drag performers who become his chosen family and act as mentors for Billy; they bring an engaging amount of drama and conflict to the novel. As Billy basks in the glitz, glamor, and camp of his new existence, he works through his sexual awakening. However, the accidental murder of a drug dealer and mercurial lover to many in the community changes everything. Currier’s novel is framed as the posthumously published memoir of a famed playwright, and it effectively evokes aspects of ’70s literature while painting each character with complexity and care. The end of the story goes a bit astray, as it labors under an oversized epilogue of fictional archival materials. However, readers will enjoy the tale’s vivid imagery as they immerse themselves in a refreshing take on a queer coming-of-age story. Burke’s full-color impressionistic portraits of the characters provide extra sweetness to an already decadent work.
A beautifully written, character-driven coming-of-age story that subverts clichés of queer literature.Pub Date: June 3, 2024
ISBN: 9780984470761
Page Count: 148
Publisher: Chelsea Station Editions
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A frank and open-minded account from Flemish journalist Joris of her venture into Zaire, formerly called the Congo, the infamous inspiration for Conrad's Heart of Darkness. As a child, Joris heard the tales told by her uncle, a Belgian missionary serving in the Congo. His visits were family milestones and the curios and gifts he sent back to Belgium became treasured heirlooms. But Joris the adult journalist wanted not only to follow in her uncle's footsteps but to see for herself what contemporary Zaire was like. A subtext here is a retrospective look at Belgian colonialism, notorious for its tragic failure to prepare the Congolese for independence, which, when it occurred, resulted in immediate chaos that led to the subsequent rise of Mobutu Sese Seko (president since 1965) and the ``Barons,'' who have brazenly used the country's great mineral wealth to enrich themselves. Joris first visits her uncle's old mission postings, where she meets his now-aging colleagues and learns that the Church is still one of the few ways out of poverty for bright young men, though many local churches and schools are closed down for lack of money. This poverty is a common theme of Congolese life, Joris learns, as she balances encounters with white expatriates with an excursion on the aging steamer that plies the Congo River from Kinshasa to Kisangani; a visit to Gbadolite, Mobutu's own Versailles; a trip to the southern mining province of Shaba, which in 1977 rebelled against Mobutu; and, on the lighter side but no less instructive, evenings in Maton, the famous entertainment district of Kinshasa. A deliberately impressionistic rather than definitive account, with Joris's perceptive insights and palpable sympathies for a long-suffering people making it more than just another travel book.
Pub Date: Oct. 13, 1992
ISBN: 0-689-12164-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
The rigors of Irish monasticism in the medieval period, well told by travel writer Moorhouse (On the Other Side, 1991; Hell's Foundations, 1992; etc.). The first half of the book is an imaginative reconstruction of life in an Irish monastery on the secluded rock-island of Skellig Michael from its founding in 588 to its dissolution in 1222. Moorhouse uses fictional vignettes to enliven the text. Each chapter is a well-chosen window onto a significant figure or event in the monastery's history—an 824 attack by Viking raiders, for example. In these fictional glimpses, we see the larger picture of Irish monasticism's evolution from a rigorously austere island faith to a less zealous, Romanized religion. Skellig Michael, perilously located on a sheer cliff rising from the ocean, began as one of the most ascetic of the Irish monasteries. Gradually, however, the population of monks began to dwindle, and the last fictionalized chapter shows the abbot and his aging disciples rowing their way back to the security of the mainland. The first half of the book is so intriguing and beautifully written that the second, a more traditional historical treatment of Irish monasticism, arranged topically, pales by comparison. Some of the discussions are absorbing, though; in one instance, Moorhouse explores the theme of syncretism, arguing that early Irish Catholicism, rather than eradicating pagan Celtic rituals, incorporated them into monastic life. This eclectic borrowing was able to continue for centuries because of Ireland's geographical remoteness from the centralizing forces of Rome. Due to accommodation with a Celtic spring ritual, Easter was dated differently than in Rome, a discrepancy that continued until Rome demanded conformity in the early 8th century. An uneven work, then, more fascinating in its first, fictionalized half than in the rigorous explications of the second, and one that might have worked better presented purely as a novel. (illustrations, not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-15-100277-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1997
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