FABRIZIO'S BOOK

by Carlo Coccioli ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

Coccioli has had a number of books here, on various lists, and this one is about Love. The mystical body. ""It's me!"" Hope. Anguish. And too many tears. Oh beauty, soul and eternity. Innocence and little boys in the sunlight. This homosexual confession is supported by a herculean attempt at sublimation. And like all incantations, it relies for the most part on repetition. The story line is simple. Fabrizio loves, unto death, Laurent. Vice versa, though Laurent is usually too sleepy to say much about love. A good deal of the book deals with Fabrizio's novelette about The Child, a spiritual wonderboy whom everyone-- butcher, old man, old woman, young boy, young girl-- seems to ""recognize."" Fabrizio's letters to Laurent and snatches from his journal are scrambled into the Child story (an old ploy of universalizing-particularizing which can be confusing). However, whether or not one thinks that perhaps all men are secretly searching for The Child, or that Fabrizio's love means that ""the time of God has come"" and there is hope in his example for other homosexuals, it is true that the book honestly tries to explain the condition of intelligent homoerotics who agonize. But 400 pages of mystical moment-making is just too much.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Shorecrest

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1966

Categories: FICTION