An offbeat collection of well-told stories with LGBTQ themes.
A set of seven familiar folktales, retold with gay characters.
In Peters’ (Irresistible, 2018, etc.) anthology of what he calls “gayly subverted” tales, readers encounter gay protagonists in folkloric settings. In “Theseus and the Minotaur,” for instance, the Greek mythological hero Theseus winds his way to the center of the Labyrinth only to find a half man/half bull with a heartbreaking life story who isn’t the monster that many people claim him to be. In the story of “Károly, Who Kept a Secret,” a boy must hide the fact that his sword sings to him, even if it turns people that he loves against him. Fumihiro and Aito, in “The Peach Boy,” encounter a giant peach with a baby inside it, and Adalbert must overcome his own selfish ways in “The Vain Prince.” In “The Jaguar of the Backward Glance,” René encounters an unknown tribe in the jungle while on an expedition, and its shaman informs him of a curse on René’s ex-lover. An Egyptian merchant living in New York City encounters a jinn in “Ma’aruf the Street Vendor”; the man wishes for a new life elsewhere, but trouble finds him there, as well, In the final tale, “A Rabbit Grows in Brooklyn,” Ramon meets a strange man named “Rabbit” who seduces him and disappears, leaving him with nothing. Peters offers versions of seven classic tales that all receive his own unique spin, which often involves playing with his audience’s expectations regarding happy endings. Not every story ends happily; however, all of them feature love between two men. The collection’s title suggests a passionate romantic romp, but the author takes a relatively low-key, literary approach to his tales. His prose is clear and fluid, which gives the stories the traditional air of their original inspirations; as a result, aficionados of all kinds of folktales may be interested in putting this book on their shelves.
An offbeat collection of well-told stories with LGBTQ themes.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-951057-25-1
Page Count: 351
Publisher: NineStar Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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