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Jul. 25th, 2010 02:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
felis_ultharusThis would be my first post to Dreamwidth. I thought I'd begin with a book review, which I do a lot of over at LJ.
I'm reading so much lately that my to-review pile is taking over my desk. So I'll take on a novel I read early in the year - Fruit by Brian Francis, the hilarious story of a too-pubescent 12-year-old boy who's the only person in Sarnia, Ontario, not to have figured out he's gay.
So how do you write the great Canadian gay novel? Believe you me, it's a topic I've given some thought to.
There are two major problems. First, any gay writer who admits that there might be problems in modern society for us in a novel or movie or TV show is accused of "angst." Gaybashing? Suicide? Rejection by family? Most of the straight world and an unfortunate number of queer folk cover their ears and say, "Don't want to hear it!"
(Oddly, the blanket ban on "angst" does not cover gay characters being killed off by straight authors. This is perfectly acceptable. It's as if getting to the end of the story alive is somehow the crime.)
The other is that the overwhelming majority of straight people do not read novels about gay men by gay men, or about lesbians by lesbians. They just don't. Even the ones who are politically sympathetic. And a lot of gay men and lesbians don't read such novels either - and accuse anyone who seeks such novels out of "ghettoizing" themselves. As if it were somehow a crime to want to see an accurate reflection of one's self in culture that usually prefers distorted images of you.
So a writer like Brian Francis has his work cut out for him. How does a gay man write a novel about a gay man in this context? For him, the answer is to write a novel about a boy who doesn't know he's gay. The word "gay" never appears. The novels maintains a cheerful, goofy tone throughout.
It's also blindingly funny - always a plus - though some may find the embarrassment-based humour somewhat squirmworthy.
As an added plus for people who don't want to read a gay novel, it deals with a far more universal issue - that series of of humiliations we call puberty. See, Peter displaces his subconscious realization that he's gay into a panic that his nipples are visible to the whole world. He eventually becomes convinced that they're talking to him.
(Weird, but I did my degree in Canadian literature. I'm an expert in weird. Newfoundland writer Wayne Johnson uses a similar conceit for his straight pre-teen's anxieties in The Divine Ryans, except a much more private body part does the talking there.)
So that's a recommendation, and a powerful one. As someone who grew up fat and gay in a small and small-minded Canadian town, let me tell you that you're not going to get a more accurate portrayal of that.
But since I like to focus on the negative, I will add two caveats to this otherwise brilliant book.
The first is that the relentlessly cheerful tone - its big selling point - is a bit of problem when you deal with, say, homophobic bullying. Peter has no clue that it's homophobic - to him it's just bullying. Even when it's done well, I can't quite make myself warm to that kind of thing played for laughs. Francis is likely writing from personal experience, but even that isn't enough for me to feel comfortable with it.
The other is the portrayal of weight loss and weight gain. I realize that a kid as large as Peter is going to have serious health issues if he doesn't lose weight, but the novel falls into that easy trap of confusing health issues with moral ones. The solution to his diet of junk food apparently isn't a health-at-every-size model of switching out chocolate bars for healthier choices, but a starvation diet that looks like anorexia in the making. This is portrayed not only as healthy, but as heroic and moral. That creeped me out.
Neither issue is enough for me to seriously temper my recommendation, though. Fruit is a brilliant book, and everyone should read it.
And if it's ever made into a movie, the theme song will have to be "Chronicles of Sarnia" by Owen Pallett. Actually, this is just an excuse to link to Owen Pallett:
(Apologies to the two of you who might've gotten this cross-posted from my LJ. I think I might be doing that a fair bit as I warm myself to Dreamwidth.)
I'm reading so much lately that my to-review pile is taking over my desk. So I'll take on a novel I read early in the year - Fruit by Brian Francis, the hilarious story of a too-pubescent 12-year-old boy who's the only person in Sarnia, Ontario, not to have figured out he's gay.
So how do you write the great Canadian gay novel? Believe you me, it's a topic I've given some thought to.
There are two major problems. First, any gay writer who admits that there might be problems in modern society for us in a novel or movie or TV show is accused of "angst." Gaybashing? Suicide? Rejection by family? Most of the straight world and an unfortunate number of queer folk cover their ears and say, "Don't want to hear it!"
(Oddly, the blanket ban on "angst" does not cover gay characters being killed off by straight authors. This is perfectly acceptable. It's as if getting to the end of the story alive is somehow the crime.)
The other is that the overwhelming majority of straight people do not read novels about gay men by gay men, or about lesbians by lesbians. They just don't. Even the ones who are politically sympathetic. And a lot of gay men and lesbians don't read such novels either - and accuse anyone who seeks such novels out of "ghettoizing" themselves. As if it were somehow a crime to want to see an accurate reflection of one's self in culture that usually prefers distorted images of you.
So a writer like Brian Francis has his work cut out for him. How does a gay man write a novel about a gay man in this context? For him, the answer is to write a novel about a boy who doesn't know he's gay. The word "gay" never appears. The novels maintains a cheerful, goofy tone throughout.
It's also blindingly funny - always a plus - though some may find the embarrassment-based humour somewhat squirmworthy.
As an added plus for people who don't want to read a gay novel, it deals with a far more universal issue - that series of of humiliations we call puberty. See, Peter displaces his subconscious realization that he's gay into a panic that his nipples are visible to the whole world. He eventually becomes convinced that they're talking to him.
(Weird, but I did my degree in Canadian literature. I'm an expert in weird. Newfoundland writer Wayne Johnson uses a similar conceit for his straight pre-teen's anxieties in The Divine Ryans, except a much more private body part does the talking there.)
So that's a recommendation, and a powerful one. As someone who grew up fat and gay in a small and small-minded Canadian town, let me tell you that you're not going to get a more accurate portrayal of that.
But since I like to focus on the negative, I will add two caveats to this otherwise brilliant book.
The first is that the relentlessly cheerful tone - its big selling point - is a bit of problem when you deal with, say, homophobic bullying. Peter has no clue that it's homophobic - to him it's just bullying. Even when it's done well, I can't quite make myself warm to that kind of thing played for laughs. Francis is likely writing from personal experience, but even that isn't enough for me to feel comfortable with it.
The other is the portrayal of weight loss and weight gain. I realize that a kid as large as Peter is going to have serious health issues if he doesn't lose weight, but the novel falls into that easy trap of confusing health issues with moral ones. The solution to his diet of junk food apparently isn't a health-at-every-size model of switching out chocolate bars for healthier choices, but a starvation diet that looks like anorexia in the making. This is portrayed not only as healthy, but as heroic and moral. That creeped me out.
Neither issue is enough for me to seriously temper my recommendation, though. Fruit is a brilliant book, and everyone should read it.
And if it's ever made into a movie, the theme song will have to be "Chronicles of Sarnia" by Owen Pallett. Actually, this is just an excuse to link to Owen Pallett:
(Apologies to the two of you who might've gotten this cross-posted from my LJ. I think I might be doing that a fair bit as I warm myself to Dreamwidth.)