I LOOK DIVINE

by Christopher Coe ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 2, 1987

Thin and one-dimensional story about a homosexual who devotes his life to narcissism. Nicholas has been found dead (""with contusions on his neck""), and his older brother has been summoned to go through the deceased's possessions. In Nicholas' mirror-paneled bedroom, he does so, and reflects as well on the past life of this self-consciously cultivated person who, in childhood, was found to have the intelligence of a genius, who was with. out question exquisitely lovely (except that his feet were too big), who was a greatly talented mimic, and who ""would glide around rooms flicking ashes into flower pots, saying things like, 'Daddy, don't be droll.'"" Much of the narrative here is taken up by memories of the brothers' world travels together (apparently they were rich; their soon-dead parents, however, are mere fleeting ciphers) as they bar-hop in the best hotels of Rome, Madrid, and Mexico--and as Nicholas flirts, taunts (""'You have no panache,' Nicholas told the man, 'but I adore your tum-tum'""), and takes up affairs with moneyed men who can't resist his beauty. Beauty, though, is ephemeral, and, atop an ancient pyramid in Mexico, symbols of decay and death begin to plague Nicholas (""I saw a single tear poised halfway clown my brother's face./That tear was teardrop shaped""), and before long--after a half-gratuitous and half-revealing trip through a gay flesh-parlor in New York--it's revealed that the aging Nicholas is no longer being paid, but is paying. After this collapse of his previously perfected aesthetic/sexual world--comes his (undescribed) death. Attempts at a neo-Wildean flavor (""Nicholas always said the worst things in life are free"") and at a symbol-structure of fin-de-siÉcle decadence are overwhelmed by the cloying preciosity of the essentially one-dimensional Nicholas, by the absurdly overdramatic and hushed reverence of his brother, and by that same brother's too-frequent stumblings over the high poetic (""I try the window, to open it, but I breathe through the glass in. stead, because there is nothing to breathe outside but night""). In all: somewhat claustrophobic, even at only 109 luxuriously uncrowded pages.

Pub Date: Sept. 2, 1987

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Ticknor & Fields/Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1987

Categories: FICTION