A Report From Winter by Wayne Courtois

Title: A Report from Winter
Author: Wayne Courtois
Genre: Memoir
URL: Amazon
Price: US$18.00
Summary (from the publisher): It’s January 1998, and the author is returning “home” after a ten-year absence to a Maine winter that’s even more brutal than usual. His mother, Jennie, is dying of cancer; she is well cared for, but unable to speak.  Needing support, Wayne calls on his longtime partner, Ralph, who heads northeast for his first exposure to the Maine cold. It’s also his first brush with Wayne’s family, including a feisty aunt and an emotionally distant brother. The contrast between a nurturing gay relationship and dysfunctional family bonds is as sharp as the wind sweeping in from the sea. Leavened with humor, A Report from Winter weaves childhood memories with the harsh realities of a family life that’s short on love. The memoir is a tribute to hard-won relationships in an uncaring world.

My Review: There’s a freedom to reviewing a memoir that one seldom gets when reviewing fiction.  On one hand, both narrative fiction and memoir can be held to the same standard when it comes to fluidity of prose, voice and style.  On the other hand, one can’t apply the same standard when it comes to character arcs or “plot,” because in memoir, the author doesn’t have the luxury of instructing the characters to grow and change, to do his bidding.  These are real people being depicted here; not fictional constructs, and as we all know, real life is seldom as neat and tidy as the fictional world.  Some people don’t grow and change.  Some moments aren’t satisfying, all wrapped up in a little bow or a happily-ever-after, and rose colored glasses don’t always work.  So how does one go about reviewing a memoir?

For me, I have to look at it from two perspectives:  does the author have a narrative style that draws the reader in, wraps him or her up in the lives he/she is spying in on, and does the writer strike emotional resonance with the reader, a universality in which a reader–no matter their orientation–can see him or herself?  On both of these fronts, author Wayne Courtois excels in just about every way.

King of Cats: A Life in Five Novellas by Blake Fraina

Title: King of Cats: A Life in Five Novellas
Author: Blake Fraina
Genre: Gay contemporary literature
URL: iUniverse
Price: Print: US$16.95 / Adobe e-book: $6.00
Warnings: Explicit m/m sex, non-con, drug use

Summary (from iUniverse): What makes a person fascinating? Is it what they hide or what they reveal? Is it who they are or who they appear to be? A struggling filmmaker believes he recognizes the face of a man in an old painting and becomes obsessed with finding him. On the cusp of his band’s success, a closeted guitarist walks out on his longtime male lover to live with a woman he hardly knows. After spending one fateful night in bed together, two youthful musicians enter into a bitter and emotionally devastating power struggle for control over their band and one another. And eight years later, tragedy forces both men to confront the inescapable and bitter legacy of their fathers’ influence. Peopled with vivid characters and told in sharp dialogue, the five stories that comprise King of Cats tell the provocative, sometimes heartbreaking story of luminous, enigmatic rock star Jimmy ‘Strange’ Lyons. Weaving back and forth through time, from a tenement in Alphabet City to a luxury co-op overlooking Central Park to a semi-detached in North London, Jimmy’s life unfolds like a mystery, gradually revealing his secrets and exposing the vast gulf that often lies between what appears to be and what is. 
 
My Review: King of Cats: A Life in Five Novellas is a tough novel to review without giving away all the secrets that make it such a fascinating, challenging and engrossing trip through the world of rock ‘n’ roll, a trip most of us can only dream about. What author Blake Fraina manages to do in 236 pages is to create a vivid world, to conjure up an almost fairytale mythology of a band on the rise. And then she does what any good writer would do: she shatters all of our fantasies, all our preconceptions about the rock and roll superstar we’ve just become smitten with, the impossibly beautiful star who, even though he’s a bit of a bad boy, manages to make us weak in the knees. The author strips away all the intoxicating glamour and the pretty facades. Sometimes she does it gently. Sometime she just rips the band-aid off without any warning at all. But the tool that Fraina uses to do this is real life. She picks at her characters and shows you the real people behind the “stars.” And then she even makes you question how real the “real” person is. As the summary states: What makes a person fascinating? Is it what they hide or what they reveal? Is it who they are or who they appear to be? It’s a question that Fraina asks and then gives hints about, but she never quite answers it, waiting for the reader, ultimately, to make up their minds about the characters she has created.

Now, I have to say, this novel is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. It can, at times, be a tough read. Let’s just say that if you are looking for a typical romance — boy-meets-boy, boy-gets-boy, boy-and-boy-move-to-California-to-get-married — you will be sorely disappointed. If your tastes run more to the authentic version of life, perhaps something along the lines of fucked-up-boy-meets-fucked-up-boy, boy-gets-boy, boy-doesn’t-want-boy-but-can’t-break-away, then this may be the book for you. There is a strong sense of realism woven into this story and like real life, sometimes it just ain’t pretty.
Neither is this novel perfect. There are some aspects I have issues with, one major; most of them minor and likely not to bother readers who enjoy their stories complex and challenging. But, I’ll get to those as I move along.

Without Wax by William Walsh

Title: Without Wax: A Documentary Novel
Author: William Walsh
Genre: Literary Fiction
URL: Casperian Books
Price: US$15.00
Additional Information: Explicit sex, explicit sex talk, non-traditional structure.

Summary (from the publisher): Interweaving traditional narrative with consumer profiles, faux interviews, court depositions, and a film script, Without Wax is a fictional biography that provides an intriguing glimpse into the adult entertainment industry.
 
My Review: In doing some Google research on this novel, I came across many different meanings attributable to the title of the book, but the one that intrigued me the most was one I came across first in the Urban Dictionary (though you can find it elsewhere):

Back in the day when people still made sculptures, some artists made mistakes. To correct these mistakes when making a sculpture of stone, they would use a colored wax to fill in the mistake. A truly great sculpture was described as being “without wax.” This term went on to be used for anything that was authentic or flawless. It is also the root of the word sincerely. Sin – without and Cera – wax.

 

I found this description incredibly applicable to this work, not because it is a perfect novel (what novel is?), but because author William Walsh has created an immensely likable, utterly sincere titular character, Wax Williams, a male porn star and the “8th wonder of the world” due to his huge endowment.  Now, I’m sure John Holmes will spring immediately to mind (well, for those of us old enough to know who John Holmes was), but while Wax’ back-story is not the most happy to be found, it is certainly not tragic, and therein lies the charm of this novel.

Mouth of the Lion by Lily Richards

Title: Mouth of the Lion
Author: Lily Richards
Genre: Literary Fiction
URL: Casperian Books
Price: $15.00
Other Information/Warnings: Drug use, violence, explicit sex, cutting.

Summary (from the publisher): The narrator of Mouth of the Lion is James Sheahan, an occasional writer and steady drug user driven by equal parts ritual, atheism, and Catholic guilt. James hasn’t talked to his youngest brother Micky in years, and his exchanges with his oldest brother Patrick are shouted across transcontinental phone lines, but he does care for his middle brother Luka, who is camped out on the living room floor together with a vagrant teenager. Until now, James’ problems have revolved around a dealer eight hours late for an appointment and a girlfriend he despises, but things are about to come apart at the seams. As spring turns to summer, Luka embarks on a quest to drag old skeletons out of the family closet and James has to confront secrets and lies: his family’s and his own. Mouth of the Lion is a novel about the ties that bind and two brothers’ obsession with changing the immutable.

My Review: Engrossing and utterly truthful, Mouth of the Lion is an unflinching and unapologetic glimpse into family dynamics, substance abuse, guilt, redemption, living with the past and finding a way through a life that has had more downs than ups.  The story begins with a truthful self-summation by our narrator, James, who warns us:  This is not a nice story because I suspect I am not a very nice man. Right then and there we know that author Richards is not going to pull any punches as she launches us into James’ world, but within a few pages we’re more than willing to ignore that warning because the narrator’s voice is charming and engaging, just as we will soon learn James can be…well, when he wants to.

The heart of the story is the relationship between James and his brother Declan, who has renamed himself Luka after declaring his prior incarnation dead.  As the story progresses we learn–through expertly interspersed flashback–that James had spent the better part of his youth raising Luka and their younger brother Mickey after their father abandoned them and their older brother Patrick ran off with his punker girlfriend, leaving  them with a mother who simply didn’t understand what motherhood was all about.  But these days, the youngest brother Micky never speaks to James, Patrick conveniently lives a continent away, and Luka is not only embroiled in the substance abuse that has come to define James’ life, but he also battles with mental illness which makes him volatile and unpredictable.  Add in the death of James’ wife–his first true love–from a drug overdose and the slight mystery that surrounds it and you have a picture perfect dysfunctional family.

Honor Killing: Race, Rape and Clarence Darrow's Spectacular Last Case by David E. Stannard

Title: Honor Killing:  Race, Rape and Clarence Darrow's Spectacular Last Case
Author: David E. Stannard
Genre: Non-fiction/true crime
URL: Amazon
Price: $16.00 (list)
Summary (from Amazon):  In 1931 Hawai‘i, Thalia Massie, the aristocratic wife of a naval officer, accused five nonwhite men of gang rape. When the trial ended in a hung jury, Thalia’s mother arranged for one of the suspects to be murdered—an act sanctioned by sympathetic whites as an "honor killing." The ensuing murder trial, Clarence Darrow’s last, enthralled the nation and exposed the shocking realities of a Hawaiian "paradise." This is the riveting story behind one of the pivotal scandals of American history.

My Review:  I’ve been vaguely aware of the “Massie Affair” for a couple of years now, but it wasn’t until I’d read Alan Brennert’s novel Honolulu that I’d decided it was a piece of history I should know more about. In his novel, Brennert weaves elements of the Massie Affair into the narrative and makes Joseph Kahahawai—one of the men falsely accused of rape in that case—a character in his story. After “meeting” Joseph in that novel, I decided that it was time I delve into the details of this dark piece of Hawaiian history. Brennert referenced David Stannard’s “Honor Killing” and so I picked it up and am I glad I did.

Honor Killing tells the story of five men—Joseph Kahahawai, Horace Ida, Ben Ahakuelo, Henry Chang and David Takai—who are accused and tried of raping Thalia Massie, a white woman and navy wife, even though they could not (as trial evidence later revealed) have committed the crime. When that trial ends in a mistrial, Tommie Massie and his mother-in-law Grace Fortescue and two other navy men kidnap Kahahawai and murder him, a crime for which they are convicted and sentenced to 10 years hard labor. Their convictions, however, were commuted by the governor to one hour served in the comfort of the Governor’s office.

Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers: A Novel by Lois-Ann Yamanaka

Title: Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers: A Novel
Author: Lois-Ann Yamanaka
Genre: Coming-of-age
URL: Amazon
Price: $15.00 (list)
Summary (from Wikipedia):  Written in both English and Hawaiian Pidgin, Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers is a coming-of-age first-person narrative of Lovey Nariyoshi, a local Japanese girl growing up in Hilo, Hawaii, after World War II. During the anti-Japanese wave that flowed through the United States during this time period, Lovey looks back at all of the key events and people in her life that help shape the young girl she becomes in the end. By only seeing white stars on TV, discovering the birthing canal with her pregnant teenage-neighbor Katy, rationalizing her best friend Jerome's homosexuality and other events, Lovey tries to find her place in the world - a world that constantly tells her that being pure Japanese is not beautiful.

My Review:  Anyone who knows me knows that I have a strong connection to the Hawaiian Islands and a strong curiosity to read the stories by Hawaiian authors. I'm not so much interested in the exoticism of the islands as I am the real, true life stories. So when author Lavina Ludlow (novel forthcoming from Casperian Books) suggested the work of Lois-Ann Yamanaka, I was more than willing to dive in.

Now, when authors are new to me, I do not search out any reviews or biographical information before hand as I don't want to color my perception of their work, positively or negatively. So when I looked at the list of Yamanaka's work, this novel was the first listed and so I went with it. And am I glad I did.

Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers is set in and about Hilo, Hawai'i (the big Island) in the 1970s. Our lead is the appealing Lovey (interestingly, one letter shy of Lovely), a relatively plain girl from a working class Hawai'i. As the blurb says, her Hawai'i is not the Hawai'i of picture post cards. Her family are barely surviving financially, unable to afford the comforts that the haole (white) islanders and many of those with whom Lovey goes to school have. This instills in Lovey a somewhat covetous personality. Like all children, she wants to fit in, be smart and popular and have the coolest things. And her attempts to fit in always seem to backfire, reminding her of her "place" in life.

The Separating Sickness, Mai Hookaawale by Ted Gugelyk and Milton Bloombaum

Title: The Separating Sickness, Mai Hookaawale
Author: Ted Gugelyk and Milton Bloombaum
Genre: Non-fiction
URL: Amazon
Price: $15.95

My Review:  This is an important work, not only because it helps convey what life was like at Kalaupapa on the island of Moloka'i for the "patients" interred there, but mostly because it records the feelings, stories, perseverance and strength of character of the residents of the one-time "leprosy settlement."

For those who do not know, starting in the 1860s, thousands of people afflicted with Hansen's disease were forcibly removed from their homes, ripped from their families and sent to live their lives in the isolated community of Kalawao on the nearly inaccessible northern peninsula on the island of Moloka'i where they were sent, essentially, to die. The Kalawao settlement was ultimately relocated to Kalaupapa. Forced isolation remained in effect until 1969 when the treatment for Hansen's was discovered.

Mary Ann in Autumn: A Tales of the City Novel by Armistead Maupin

Title: Mary Ann in Autumn: A Tales of the City Novel
Author: Armistead Maupin
Genre: Literary Fiction
URL: Amazon
Price: $25.99 list

Summary (from the publisher):  Twenty years have passed since Mary Ann Singleton left her husband and child in San Francisco to pursue her dream of a television career in New York. Now, a pair of personal calamities has driven her back to the city of her youth and into the arms of her oldest friend, Michael “Mouse” Tolliver, a gay gardener happily ensconced with his much-younger husband.
Mary Ann finds temporary refuge in the couple's backyard cottage, where, at the unnerving age of 57, she licks her wounds and takes stock of her mistakes. Soon, with the help of Facebook and a few old friends, she begins to reengage with life, only to confront fresh terrors when her speckled past comes back to haunt her in a way she could never have imagined.

After the intimate first-person narrative of Maupin's last novel, Michael Tolliver Lives, Mary Ann in Autumn marks the author's return to the multi-character plotlines and darkly comic themes of his earlier work. Among those caught in Mary Ann's orbit are her estranged daughter, Shawna, a popular sex blogger; Jake Greenleaf, Michael's transgendered gardening assistant; socialite DeDe Halcyon-Wilson; and the indefatigable Anna Madrigal, Mary Ann's former landlady at 28 Barbary Lane.

Over three decades in the making, Armistead Maupin's legendary Tales of the City series rolls into a new age, still sassy, irreverent and curious, and still exploring the boundaries of the human experience with insight, compassion and mordant wit.



My Review:  It’s a complete coincidence that I ended up in San Francisco just days before Mary Ann in Autumn, Armistead Maupin’s latest installment of the Tales of The City series, was released. The trip was planned well before I ever knew the release date of the novel, but once I learned of the close proximity of the two events, my trip to the Bay Area transformed into a pilgrimage of sorts to Maupin’s endearing and iconic works, Mrs. Madrigal, Michael “Mouse” Tolliver, and all the denizens of the Tales of the City.

After walking all the way from Market and Powell, getting lost, and going up and down Russian Hill at the grand old age of 46, I found myself, winded and sweating, standing on the steps of Macondray Lane—the real life inspiration for the house that has been etched into my psyche for so long—hoping to capture a little bit of the magic of that literary world. And it’s only fitting that in the opening chapter of Mary Ann in Autumn, the titular character, Mary Ann Singleton, finds herself climbing those same stairs to catch a glimpse of her former home, 28 Barbary Lane.  With wistfulness and longing, the 57 year-old stares through the locked gate of the property, similarly trying to recapture the magic that had been her past life, one she abandoned so many years ago along with her husband and adoptive daughter.

With that scene, Maupin perfectly sets the tone for Mary Ann in Autumn, a sweet and solid entry in the Tales of the City mythos that is part nostalgia (for both the readers and the character of Mary Ann), and a deceptively simple exploration of the desire for one person to discover who they truly are after pursuing who they thought they wanted to be.

MINOR SPOILERS AFTER THE CUT

Mama Fish by Rio Youers

Title: Mama Fish
Author: Rio Youers
Genre: Dark Fiction (horror/speculative)
URL: Amazon
Price: $7.99 (note that this is a novella length work at 92 pages)
Summary (from the publisher): At Harlequin High School In 1986, Kelvin Fish was the oddball, the weird kid that no one would talk to, except for Patrick Beauchamp who was determined to learn more. When Patrick’s curiosity about Kelvin leads him into a bizarre and tragic series of events, Patrick gets much more than he bargained for. 

My Review: Damn, Rio Youers can write.

Mama Fish is an interesting little novella and one that is hard to categorize. Part coming-of-age, part befriended misfits, part urban horror, and part speculative, this novella is most certainly a page-turner, keeping me engrossed the whole way.

In the Closet, Under the Bed by Lee Thomas

Title: In the Closet, Under the Bed
Author: Lee Thomas
Genre: Horror/Dark Fiction
URL: Amazon
Price: US$16.00

Other Information/warnings: Stoker Award Nominee, Lambda Literary Award Finalist

Summary (from the Publisher): A breathtaking collection of literary dark fiction that will force you to face the terror lurking…in the closet, under the bed… In this collection of fifteen tales, award-winning author Lee Thomas casts light on the shadows in our closets and explores the fear of boogeymen and beasts we sense lying in wait under our beds. Featuring nine original tales and six acclaimed short stories gathered together in one volume for the first time anywhere, In the Closet, Under the Bed reminds us that sometimes the most terrifying aspects of the human condition come from within.

My Review: Having grown up on a steady diet of Hitchcock (films and TV show), the Twilight Zone, Outer Limits and Night Gallery, I’ve always had a penchant for horror and suspense, both in film and in literature. And it is perhaps because of growing up with these influences that horror seldom actually scares me. It is rare for me to read a book or see a movie and get chills down my neck or to worry what might be lurking on the other side of the door in my dark apartment as I read. I just know it all too well. I’m jaded that way. And I have to say, that Lee Thomas’ extraordinary collection of short stories is no exception. None of the stories actually scared me….they did something better….they disturbed me.

All I Asking for is My Body by Milton Murayama

Title: All I Asking For is My Body
Author: Milton Murayama
Genre: Literary Fiction, Coming of Age, Hawaiiana
URL: Amazon
Price: US$9.95

Summary: A trio of stories exploring the plantation life in Hawaii.

My Review: First and foremost, I must state up front that this work is a novella length work, clocking in at approximately 100 pages. But don’t let that dissuade you as Milton Murayama packs more into those 100 pages than most novels manage to do in 300+ pages.

This is an outstanding work, capturing so many varied aspects of the nisei (second generation Japanese Americans) experience in Hawai’i during the years leading up to (and including) the bombing at Pearl Harbor. I understand completely why it is considered a classic as it drew me in with its deceptively simple prose, rich characters, and vivid setting, all accomplished without verbosity.

The Literary Six by Vince A. Liaguno

Title: The Literary Six
Author: Vince A. Liaguno
Genre: Horror/Dark Fiction, GLBT Fiction
URL: Amazon
Price: US$24.95


Summary (from the publisher): For the faculty, students, and alumni of Bendleton University, The Literary Six was the scourge of its collective existence for four long years. Notorious across the campus for its snobby witticisms and scathing critiques of the university, its faculty, its students, and its founders, this elite group of college literati fashioned itself in the likeness of Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin Round Table – an irreverent group of playwrights, theatre critics, and novelists who regularly lunched at the historic Algonquin Hotel in the 1920s. Indeed, graduation day for the members of The Literary Six brought a sigh of relief for many on the receiving end of the group’s caustic pen. As members of The Literary Six disbanded after graduation and went on to pursue careers as successful novelists, journalists, publishers, editors, and academics, they made a pact to reunite and celebrate the glory days of their scandalous collegiate association. This year, the six members of the infamous literary club are making their way to Shelter Rock Island, to the home of fellow member and bestselling authoress Taylor Miller and her television producer husband for a New Year’s Eve weekend of rekindled friendships, reminiscing, and unrequited love. But this year’s annual reunion will be like no other; a face from their collective past will be joining them. And as the island is cut off from the mainland in a winter storm that blankets the New England coastline, the members of The Literary Six will face retribution for the sins committed through their literary transgressions at the hands of a malevolence none of them could have conjured in the deepest recesses of their creative minds. And as the snow falls in silence around them, The Literary Six will begin to fall one by one and a desperate struggle for survival will unfold.

My Review: I’m late to the party with this novel (released in 2006) and boy am I sorry it took me so long to stumble upon it. Take a slasher flick, mix in a dash of Agatha Christie and a pinch of Ghost Story while folding in really interesting, rich characters, and the result is a novel you can enjoy while curled up in bed on a cold winter night  or on a beach somewhere as you tan away your summer vacation.

From beginning to end this novel is fun, giving those of us raised on  80s slasher films a nostalgic feeling in our chests while adding a dimensionality one didn’t usually get in those same films.  In short, Liaguno (who would go on to win a coveted Stoker Award as co-editor of Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet) has given us something to love without having a reason to be embarrassed for loving it.

Martyrs & Monsters by Robert Dunbar

Title: Martyrs & Monsters
Author: Robert Dunbar
Genre: Horror/Dark Fiction, GLBT Fiction
URL: Amazon
Price: US$17.99 (list)
Warnings: Well, it’s horror, so violence, drug use, murder, and mayhem. The usual.

Summary (from the publisher): Robert Dunbar has been called one of the “saviors of contemporary dark fiction” and an “avatar of literary horror.” Martyrs & Monsters runs the gamut of this extraordinary author’s narrative range, embracing vampires and sea serpents, werewolves and swamp creatures . . . as well as a host of nightmares for which no names exist. Whether set on an orbiting space station or within a haunted tenement, these terrifying tales are steeped in a passionate intensity that renders them all but unique within the genre, and all boast a sophistication that qualifies them as that rarest of rare commodities: horror for adults.
 
My Review: If Alfred Hitchcock were alive today and desired to “re-imagine” his 1948 classic “Rope,” he’d want Robert Dunbar to write the screenplay. Guaranteed.




Dunbar starts his impressive collection off with “Getting Wet,” a moody, tension-filled piece that does indeed measure up to my all time Hitch film, with Dunbar’s Con and Tim evoking the controlling Brandon and the nervous, needy Phillip. But this isn’t some re-tread of familiar material as, really, the two stories share little in common other than two fascinating lead characters and the realistic and dangerous relationship between them.  Quite frankly, if anything, this is “Rope” with crack heads, and is completely and utterly engrossing.

Rot by Michele Lee

Title: Rot
Author: Michele Lee
Genre: Horror, GLBT Interest
URL: Horror Mall
Price: Trade Softcover: US$14.95 – Mobi/Epub/PDF:  US$3.95
Warnings: Gore, Violence

Summary (from the publisher): Zombies Can Be Such a Burden. So you’ve raised your loved ones from the dead, but had no idea how difficult it would be to care for them. No problem! Silver Springs is a warm, peaceful facility equipped to handle all your zombie needs. Their friendly staff will ensure they have a safe environment with daily exercise and raw meat. Rest easy knowing they’re in good hands… as they rot. In Michele Lee’s Rot, you won’t find an apocalypse or Romero-style flesh-eaters.  This is far more disturbing. In a world where certain people can will others back from death, Silver Springs Specialty Care Community caters to the undead for those who aren’t quite ready to let go (zombie milk available by special arrangement at the home office). Dean, retired from the military and looking for an easier life, runs security at this zombie-herding farm, but he learns that dark injustice is not unique to war.  There’s a rotten core to Silver Springs.  Now, Dean and a quickly decaying corpse named Patrick are on the hunt for a woman they both love and lost to a lucrative business that specializes in greed, zombies and never having to say goodbye.

Disclaimer: This is a novella length work. I purchased the PDF version of the book and it should be noted that the PDF version is not formatted correctly for Sony e-reader’s enlarged text feature and the normal view text size is so small it was not readable for me.  Be aware that if you use a Sony e-reader and want to enlarge the text, nearly all formatting will be lost and paragraphs and dialog will run together.  I have not examined the other available e-formats to determine if the same problems exist.  I’d also recommend ignoring the tongue-in-cheek tone of the publisher’s blurb. While there is some dark humor in the novella, the blurb doesn’t really do justice to the work.

My Review: Never, ever has a review given me more pause than this one.  I’ve sat with it for days, trying to ascertain my honest feelings about Michele Lee’s debut novella. There is so very much here to praise: from its inventiveness with a genre that has been (pun completely intended) done to death to the wonderful humanity of the zombie characters Lee has created. And yet, I have to be honest and point out that there were significant problems for me with other aspects of the work, problems that left me disappointed in the work as a whole.  It’s a battle of wills….half of me wanting nothing more than to jump up and down and give this a 10-star, rave review, and the other half of me going…wait.  So forgive me if this review seems to suffer from a bit of split personality.

I was an alien cat toy by Ann Somerville

Title: I was an alien cat toy
Author: Ann Somerville
Genre: Fantasy/Speculative Fiction
URL: Smashwords
US$3.99
Other Information/warnings: Non-consensual sex, inter-species sex, adult themes.
Summary [from Author]: Temin crash lands on an unexplored planet and gets up front and personal with the natives – who are giant felines.
 
My Review: To be perfectly honest, if I were prowling the aisle of my local literary chain and came across this book on the shelves, I would have given a little laugh at the cleverness of the title; I might even have flipped it over to read the dust jacket. Ultimately, however, I would have passed it by without a second thought. Not my cup of tea, I would have thought. And I would have been so much the worse for having thought so. I didn’t know what to expect when I started reading this novel. I wasn’t sure if it would be a romance, a male/male bodice ripper, or a Pythonian take on erotica, all of which could have gone horribly wrong given the core premise. In the end, what I got was immensely satisfying….a deeply moving story of love, of friendship, of recognizing the things that make us different while still managing to find those commonalities that bind us together. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not a perfect novel and I do have a few gripes, but none are egregious and none detract from a story that is expertly told.

Fixer Chao by Han Ong

Title: Fixer Chao
Author: Han Ong
Genre: Satire, dark humor
URL: Amazon.com
Price: US$15.00
Other Information/Warnings: violence, dark humor, murder
Summary (from the publisher): William Paulinha, a Filipino street hustler, is in the early days of self-imposed reform when he meets Schem C., a failed writer ostracized by New York City’s literati.  Shem recruits Paulinha to retaliate against the community that spurned him, and under Shem’s guidance, Paulinha becomes Master Chao, a revered practitioner of Feng Shui–the Chinese art of creating a harmonious environment that promises its adherents peace and prosperity.  As this latter-day confidence man cuts a swath through upper-crust society, his biting observations form a comic picaresque of class resentment and revenge.
 
My Review: I have been finally working my way through reviews I’ve meant to write for ages for books I consider essential gay reads, and the first up is one of my favorites.

An outstanding literary debut by playwright Han Ong, Fixer Chao manages to be a brilliant satire of the excesses of elitist Manhattanites in the late 90s, while at the same time managing to be a riveting portrait of a failed American dream.  Darkly funny and at times very touching, this novel delves into many themes and is a roller coaster of a ride for both us and our protagonist

Letters to Montgomery Clift by Noel Alumit

Title: Letters to Montgomery Clift
Author: Noel Alumit
Genre: Literary Fiction
URL: Amazon.com
Price: US$12.55
Warnings: Explicit m/m sex, violence.
Summary [from publisher]: “Praying is not enough–better put it in writing!’ Bong Bong Luwad is living with his selfish Auntie Yuna in L.A., far from his Philippine village, the Marcos regime, and his mother who helped him escape. Bong Bong spends his nights watching old movies on TV, while Auntie Yuna writes pleading letters to saints and dead relatives. One night on the late-late movie, Bong Bong finds his own saint: Montgomery Clift, playing a soldier who helps a lost boy find his mother. Can Monty do the same for him? He gets out a pencil and paper and thus begins a series of extraordinary events that carry him from boyhood to adolescence, through sexual awakening, madness, and finally back to a place where he can begin his life again. Letters to Montgomery Clift is a novel of endurance and hope. It is a tale of growing up, coming out, and going home.

My Review:

december 4, 1976
dear mr. montgomery clift,
i want one thing only. please bring my mama back to me. safe. with no more bruises.
i will wait one week. if nothing bad happens then i know it is ok to write you.
Sign
bong bong luwad

With that one child-like letter, author Noel Alumit sets a haunting tone that carries on throughout his remarkable debut novel, Letters to Montgomery Clift. But not only does that letter mark the beginning of the story, it is also the start of a long and sometime intimate relationship that young Bong Bong Luwad develops with Mr. Montgomery Clift, the dead, sexually confused actor who starred in such films as From Here to Eternity and The Search. But don’t let this tone fool you.  Letters to Montgomery Clift is not a downer of a book.  It is at its heart a story about love, about growing up and coming out, about enduring and overcoming, and, most of all, about going home.

Drawing Blood by Poppy Z. Brite

Title: Drawing Blood
Author: Poppy Z. Brite
Genre: Gay contemporary horror
URL: Amazon
Price: US$7.99
Other Information/warnings: Explicit m/m sex, gore, violence, murder, drug use
Summary (from the original edition): Robert McGee is a man living under a dark cloud. Acclaimed cartoonist of the underground comic Birdland, he has moved his family from Texas to New Orleans and finally to Missing Mile, North Carolina. But Robert is unable to escape the drinking and violence that have become as natural to him as breathing. Soon after he and his family settle into a decrepit farmhouse, Robert kills his wife, his younger son, and then himself. Only his five-year-old son, Trevor, is left alive.

Twenty years later Trevor McGee, also a cartoonist, returns to Missing Mile to the house in which his family once lived. He has been running from the truth for years, and finally realizes he must face his demons. He fears that what happened to his father will happen to him. “But if it does,” Trevor thinks, “at least I won’t have anyone to kill.”  Then he befriends Zachary Bosch, a computer hacker from New Orleans running from the law.

In the house, which Trevor calls Birdland, they must confront more than bad memories. For the house carries its own dark force, which threatens to envelope Trevor in the past and destroy him.

My Review: Back when Anne Rice was all the rage, dozens of authors jumped on the brooding, melodramatic historical vampire quickly turning what Rice wrote into a literary cliché. The shelves were littered with Rice wanna-be’s. Then along came Poppy Z. Brite, a short story writer who was making the horror world sit up and take notice by blending very realistic, human characters with an almost splatter-punk kind of sensibility. To boot, Brite was doing what many authors had never even contemplated.  She was making gay characters the protagonists in her stories.  When her first novel, Lost Souls, was released, it breathed new life into the bland, clichéd vampire that had become de rigueur, by giving us vamps that loved being what they were and mixing them with goth scene characters who were actually more than brooding, pretentious teens in black clothes, nail polish, and eyeliner.  In short, she made her vampires and her other characters real people, warts and all.  Her characters weren’t homoerotic.  She wasn’t willing to dance around the subject.  He characters were homosexual.

With Lost Souls, Brite burst on the scene and along came the comparisons to Rice, the claims by critics and Rice lovers that she must have been influenced by Rice’s writing, despite statements from Brite that she had never read Rice’s work.  Wisely, Brite was not one to be satisfied with her immensely popular vampire characters (in fact, she has never returned to them despite what must have been a very lucrative temptation to), and we were treated to another reinvention by Brite, the haunted house story in her second novel, Drawing Blood.

Moloka'i by Alan Brennert

Title: Moloka’i
Author: Alan Brennert
Genre: Historical Fiction, Hawaiiana
URL: Amazon
Price: US$11.16
Warnings: None
Summary (from the publisher): This richly imagined novel, set in Hawai’i more than a century ago, is an extraordinary epic of a little-known time and place–and a deeply moving testament to the resiliency of the human spirit.
 
Rachel Kalama, a spirited seven-year-old Hawaiian girl, dreams of visiting far-off lands like her father, a merchant seaman. Then on day, a rose-colored mark appears on her skin, and those dreams are stolen from her. Taken from her home and family, Rachel is sent to Kalaupapa, the quarantined leprosy settlement on the island of Moloka’i.  Here her life is supposed to end — but instead she discovers it is only just beginning.

My Review: After having read the exploitative and shameful “non-fiction” work “The Colony,” by John Tayman, I was a bit leery of Alan Brennert’s “Moloka’i,” a wholly fictional account of the one-time leper colony on the Kalaupapa Peninsula of Moloka’i. I am very glad, however, that I did read Brennert’s amazing novel as it gives a far more accurate portrayal of the time and the place and the people than Tayman’s book ever could.  It is a sweeping piece of historical fiction and an emotional (but never manipulative) journey of seven-year-old Rachel Kalama who, after being diagnosed in the late 1800s, is sent to Kalawao/Kalaupapa, the site on Moloka’i which served as a leper colony from 1866 until 1969.

Unlike Tayman (whose non-fiction account has been decried by scholars and the remaining residents of Kalaupapa themselves), Brennert does not feel the need to sensationalize the historical facts to tell his story. Brennert did his research and was wise enough to know that the story was compelling enough—it didn’t need to be “ratcheted up”—to have an emotional impact upon the reader and to do justice to the thousands who lived and died at Kalawao and Kalaupapa.

Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite

Title: Lost Souls
Author: Poppy Z. Brite
Genre: Contemporary horror, vampire, literary fiction
URL: Amazon
Price: US$7.99
Other Information/warnings: drug usage, incest, rape, domestic violence, violence, gore, explicit m/m sex
Summary [from the original edition]:
They are the children of the night, dressed in black, adrift without an anchor, looking for love, acceptance, a meaning in their lives.

Nothing discovers his true name on the handwritten note that was pinned to his baby blanket eighteen years earlier. It sings in his blood, telling him that all he believed himself to be is false. The discovery that he is a vampire, and the son of a vampire, seems the most natural thing in the world to him.
Ann finds herself drawn to one of the three pale, partying strangers who come to town. They drink wine that tastes almost like blood. And the small one, Zillah, has the most amazing green eyes.

Ghost has always had visions and sensations that come from beyond his small town, from beyond the world of the living. Now his powers lead him away from home to New Orleans in a desperate attempt to save Ann from her new companions, and to save Nothing from himself.

My review: Everywhere you go these days, you can’t help but hear all the kids talking about Twilight: about how the vampires are so groundbreaking, how they can walk about during the day, about how their fangs don’t show until they need them, how the angst of these teen vampires just speaks to them.  Now, I haven’t read Twilight, but I do have a few acquaintances (significantly younger than I) who can not get their fill of the brooding teen bloodsuckers, and I’ve heard more than my fill of the plots or the groundbreaking nature of the books.  Except, you know what? None of it sounds particularly groundbreaking to me, and I have to point out to the fans of this newest vampiric incarnation that much of what they are describing has been done before and–from what excerpts I’ve read of Twilight and the various literary reviews–done better.

Testosterone by James Robert Baker

Title: Testosterone
Author: James Robert Baker
Genre: Literary Fiction, Transgressional Fiction
URL: Amazon
Price: Varies by third party sellers (Out of Print)

Other Information/warnings: Extreme violence, bad language, racism,  drug use, animal cruelty
Summary [from the publisher]:  A package from Dean Seagrave has arrived in James Robert Baker’s mailbox.  Baker was expecting a bootleg of the Bad Religion show at the Palace. But instead of Bad Religion he got bad religion: Palo Mayombe, to be exact.  Seagrave, it seems, has spent the day tooling around Los Angeles in a rental car with a hand-held tape recorder, searching for his sexy ex-lover Pablo Ortega, who went out one night for cigarettes and never came back.  The police are on Dean’s trail for assaulting an old woman outside a grocery store, or so he has been told by the man in a wheelchair he attacked at Venice Beach.

Seagrave explains his frenzied quest by saying he believes Pablo is “an emotional serial killer.”  Every stop on the trail brings to light more disturbing information about Pablo Ortega. Pablo, it turns out, is into Palo Mayombe, an ultraviolent form of Santeria involving animal and possibly human sacrifice. Pablo may even have been in government-sanctioned torture in his native Chile. Furthermore, Pablo has placed a curse on Dean Seagrave–a curse that can be broken only through a ritual involving the severed head of Pablo.

The problem is, Dean might be crazy. Or everyone might be lying.  Either way, Dean has a machete–because the chainsaw was too loud–and he’s just found Pablo.

My Review: The late James Robert Baker is definitely an acquired taste and, while a cult author, he has certainly had his fair share of detractors.  A self-described anarchist, Baker’s literary career was deeply informed by his Long Beach, California, roots, the rise of the AIDS pandemic, and the staunch Republican refusal to react–let alone accept–the devastating reality of that disease.  Baker has been called “The Last Angry Gay Man,” a racist and an irresponsible writer, claims some still hold to be true.  While I can certainly see where the claims come from, when one looks deeper into his body of work and his background one has to question the negative assertions and affirm the former.  Baker was an Angry Gay Man and his fiction reflects it in its brutality, dark humor and deeply satirical nature. If one simply looks at the surface of his works one would see why he was called irresponsible and a racist and one might even believe it.   But what one could never call Baker was “safe.”

Testosterone was published posthumously–Baker committed suicide in 1997 at the age of 51–and is a bit of departure.  Instead of his usual prose style, Baker employed the literary conceit of having the narrator, Dean Seagrave, dictate the entire story into a hand-held tape recorder as he travels around Los Angeles in search of his former lover, Pablo Ortega.  Each of the extended chapters is one cassette tape, and as the story progresses we see Seagrave descend into madness….or do we?

Honolulu by Alan Brennert

Title: Honolulu
Author: Alan Brennert
Genre: Historical Fiction, Hawaiiana
URL: Amazon
Price: US$24.95 (hardcover list price)
Warnings: Some violence

Summary (from the publisher): Honolulu is the rich, unforgettable story of a young “picture bride” who journeys to Hawai’i in 1914 in search of a better life. Instead of the affluent young husband and chance at an education that she has been promised, she is quickly married off to a poor, embittered laborer who takes his frustrations out on his new wife. Renaming herself Jin, she makes her own way in this strange land, finding both opportunity and prejudice. With the help of three of her fellow picture brides, Jin prospers along with her adopted city, which is growing from a small territorial capital into the great multicultural city it is today. But paradise has its dark side, whether it’s the daily struggle for survival in Honolulu’s tenements, or a crime that will become the most infamous in the island’s history.
With its passionate knowledge of people and places in Hawai’i far off the tourist track, Honolulu is most of all the spellbinding tale of four women in a new world, united by dreams, disappointment, sacrifices and friendship. 

My Review:  Generally, historical fiction is not a genre I actively seek out unless the subject matter is something that intrigues me or about which I have a particular passion.  My brief forays into historicals have led me to discover some amazing books and some which, regrettably, read like nothing more than the history textbooks I so despised when I was in school.  I stumbled onto Alan Brennert through my passion for Hawaiian history and that led me to his prior novel, Moloka’i, an exquisite example of historical fiction that is moving and full of wonderful characterization. When I learned that his next novel was entitled Honolulu, I was both excited and cautious.  I was excited because Brennert was revisiting Hawaiian history which he had done so well in Moloka’i, and cautious because I knew that follow-up novels (one can’t call this a sophomore outing as Brennert has a nice literary back-list) can often be disappointing and because Honolulu had some pretty big shoes to fill in my eyes.  Well, I am happy to say that Brennert did not in any way let me down with this novel.  From both a fiction and a historical fiction perspective, this novel has everything I crave in a good book:  dynamic characters, an easy storytelling style, emotional resonance and that wonderful feeling I am left with when a novel transports me to a different locale.  While I can’t say that Honolulu exceeds its predecessor, I can say that it absolutely equals it in just about every respect.

The Night Listener by Armistead Maupin

Title: The Night Listener
Author: Armistead Maupin
Genre: Literary Fiction, Psychological Suspense
URL: Amazon
Price: US$14.95
Other Information/warnings: Explicit sex, frank discussion of ritualistic sexual abuse

Summary: Gabriel Noone is a professional storyteller who broadcasts stories for a long-running PBS series, “Noone at Night.”  When his editor sends Gabriel yet another book to blurb, he reluctantly opens the package to find a  memoir by Pete Lomax, an HIV-positive 13-year-old survivor of ritualistic sexual abuse, called The Blacking Factory, after the factory where Charles Dickens spent part of his dreary childhood.  After Pete escaped from his parents, he was adopted by a therapist named Donna Lomax and his recovery from the abuse was helped along by listening to the broadcasts of “Noone at Night.” Touched by Pete’s devotion to his stories, Gabriel finds himself drawn into an intense relationship with his young fan, involving long, late-night phone calls.  But then questions start to arise about Pete and his story,  and Noone begins to question how much he really knows.  Noone begins to question his own motives, as well as those of the boy and the boy’ mother.  In fact he begins to question Pete’s very existence as no one has ever met the boy.


My review: First, a disclaimer.  This review covers the original publication of the novel. The link above is to the movie-tie in version.  The movie varies substantially from the original novel and it is unknown if the tie-in version of the novel was rewritten to incorporate new information and/or details found in the movie.

The novel The Night Listener is Maupin’s fictional take on his interaction with Anthony Godby Johnson, a “young boy” who was presented as having been brutally abused as a child. Johnson wrote a book that was sent out in galley form to many celebrities, and like J.T. Leroy who would claim the same thing many years later (and subsequently be proven a massive hoax), the celebrities took to this boy, many becoming friends with him over the phone. You can read more about the cases in the links above, if you’ve the desire to know more.

I have to admit upfront that I am an unabashed fan of Maupin’s work.  There is a simplicity to his prose that belies the emotional complexity of the characters he creates, and whether it be his series Tales of the City or his departures from that series like Maybe the Moon, it is rare for me to find fault in his work. There is also an almost Hitchcockian feel to the plots of his novels which, while never detracting from the almost whimsical tone of his stories, always creates a nice blend of genres.  The Night Listener, however, is perhaps his greatest departure from this style: a dark and brooding look at loss and betrayal and the need for human contact.  It can be a brutal read (a friend to whom I lent the book called it “one of the most depressing novels” she’d ever read).  But what it also is is a novel which really explores the range that Maupin has as a storyteller, and makes him, in my mind, one of the best novelists out there, gay or straight.

Edinburgh by Alexander Chee

Title: Edinburgh
Author: Alexander Chee
Genre: Contemporary literature
URL: Amazon
Price:  US$11.20
Other Information/Warnings: Possible sexual abuse triggers

Summary (from the publisher): As a child, Fee is a gifted Korean American soprano in a boys´ choir in Maine. Silent after being abused by the director, he is unable to warn the other boys or protect his best friend, Peter, from the director´s advances. Even after the director is imprisoned, Fee continues to believe he is responsible, and while he survives into adulthood, his friends do not. In the years that follow, he struggles to bury his guilt and grief, until he meets a beautiful young student who resembles Peter, and he is forced to confront the demons of his brutal past. 

My Review: What is so remarkable about Alexander Chee’s debut novel Edinburgh is that he does what is so very difficult to do: he takes what is ugly and despicable and creates a compelling, utterly truthful and, yes, an even beautiful story of it. By interweaving his prose with Korean folklore, Chee imbues the novel with an almost dreamlike state, one where the dream is equal parts part nightmare and a rose-tinted remembrance of a childhood gone too quickly.

The Silent Hustler by Sean Meriwether

Title: The Silent Hustler
Author: Sean Meriwether
Genre: contemporary literary fiction, erotica, single author anthology
URL: Amazon
Price: US$15.00
Other information/warnings: Explicit content.

Summary (from the publisher): Best known for being the editor of edgy gay fiction of the Velvet Mafia website, Sean Meriwether has quietly been writing short fiction and building up a body of his own work. The Silent Hustler collects his short fiction published over the last decade. Meriwether’s fiction spans in range from the literary (“Things I Can’t Tell My Father”) to the revolutionary (“Burn the Rich”) to the downright raunchy (“Sneaker Queen”). Slip into bed with The Silent Hustler. You won’t feel guilty in the morning.

My Review: 

For years, Sean Meriwether has served as editor of two of the most cutting-edge web magazines out there: Outsider Ink (now shuttered) and Velvet Mafia: Dangerous Queer Fiction.  During his time with both markets, Meriwether has found exceptional literature by some of the best writers working. Occasionally he’s also thrown one of his own works into the mix and that is how I first discovered Meriwether as an author in his own right. Over the years, Meriwether has been amassing an enviable body of work and that, my friends, is a very good thing for us.

Teot’s War (Song of Naga Teot, Book 1) by Heather Gladney

Title: Teot’s War (Song of Naga Teot, Book 1)
Author: Heather Gladney
Genre: Literary Fiction, Fantasy, Speculative Fiction
URL: Out of print – Available from third party sellers at Amazon.
Price: Varies
Warnings: Very mild violence
Summary (from the original edition): He rode out of the desert with two swords strapped across his back, a harp at his side, and nightmares burning in his eyes.  He came from the wastelands smoldering with hate, no room in his heart for anything else. Until he met the gaze of Liege Lord of Tan, who claimed his Oath, his loyalty, and more. A king held captive by his position, a swordsman held captive by his Oath, together they would start a war–and free their land, or die.

My Review: 

Cars become antiques when they hit the age of 20 years.  But they don’t necessarily become classics when they hit that age.  What goes into making an antique car a classic is harder to define…the smoothness of the ride, the quality of the craftsmanship, the beauty of the design, the reaction of the audience as it looks back and remembers the times of their lives spent with that car.  The same can be said about literature.  Many books have withstood the test of time, but how many are classics.  Well, Teot’s War was originally published in 1987 and though it has taken me 22 years to discover it, this novel is anything but dated.  It may be antique in the best sense of the word, but what is even more impressive is that–in my eyes anyway– it is a classic in every sense of the word.  Classic adventure. Classic fantasy.  And classic homoerotic fiction.