Rating: 
Summary: finally finished it
Review: I received this book for x mas from my partner on a recommendation from the reviews on amazon. its now July .. and try as i might, i am still on chapter 3. i think the main problem is, Russell tried too hard with too many words to draw the charactersOK finally finished the book on august. This was one of the longest, dullest reads I have ever had. I didn't care about the characters in the slightest. I was looking forwards to this book, but I was greatly disappointed. Don't waste your money!
Rating: 
Summary: last 150 pages
Review: I enjoyed this. The last 150 pages are worth the read if you can just hang in on the first 200. Tracy is the kind of guy you would love as a friend.
Rating: 
Summary: "The Coming Storm" in the middle of the night
Review: 960 words "The Coming Storm" by Paul Russell reviewed by Barry Eysman The book is excellently written, the characters are
satisfyingly complex, the struggles of Noah and his
teacher Tracy, Noah's HIV positive friend Fatwa, the
courage of writer and publisher, the sensitivity and
integrity, and the knowledge that nothing human is
worthy of being consigned into a one liner from an
abnormal psych textbook are there. My tiredness,
however, comes from not believing this book will
have one single ounce of effect in the possible
transformation of, especially, all the counterparts of
Libby and Louis and all the cloistered dreams and
desires. This is a book much worth reading, but it
comes up against psychobabble and smart mouth
psychologists and psychiatrists on TV, in books, in
"reality." It shouts from the rooftops, and its muted
pain and its snowy depths glitter with the knowledge
that people are dying inside all over the place, for as
many reasons as there are human hearts. This book would cause a firestorm if made into a
film, if the book was hewed closely to. As a novel,
readers come to it or not. It makes one feel liberal
and smart. Perhaps the cynicism I bring to any
writing that tweaks, that causes one to think, that
dares to illicit the viewpoint we are all, children,
teenagers, men and women of all ages, sexual beings,
comes with fear of being led down the garden path.
There are far too many clichés among us. We have to
be one thing or another. From a writer's perspective,
any subject must be dealt with in any way one
chooses. Without that, there is no freedom. And if
the relationships in this book are so many facets of
romanticism, sloppiness, fear, budding desire,
awkwardness, if there are enough boundaries
crossed, then it's theoretical, just a story. We don't
have to deal with it. John Walsh will. Our own
mentalities are banal, let's face it, for most all of us. Russell's book shows sexuality that would upset
homosexuals as much as heterosexuals, and as such,
it is a giant tapestry that extends from frightening and
bold, to meek and sad beyond bearing, from bowing
down to authorities who really aren't much
authorities on anything. It is so filled with life, this
book, that I wish I could throw off my jadedness and
shout praises for it. I do praise it, but... And with
some fear. I notice many of the customer reviewers
did not use their names. Who can blame them? One
gets tarred for whatever one writes if it does not
accrue to the party line. One feels one has to
document one's own history. I am not now, nor have
I ever been a Communist. The fact that some homosexuals are embracing this
book is somewhat extraordinary. There is much made
in the novel of "Death in Venice" and "A Separate
Peace," and a person sees there is much history here,
and the desire in Russell's novel not to beat around
the bush, as Mann was forced to do for instance,
inducing much of his artistry however. There is much
in "The Coming Storm" that is not about the central
relationship. Though the chain of homosexuality
between headmasters and teachers and the boys at
the school over the decades seems somewhat pat,
there are so many warts and hurts and breaks in
philosophy that call to anyone who is fraught with the
psychologizing of America. This book should be
read, at least as a tonic against that. And because it's
about constantly fighting for, running from, rushing
toward relationships, pretending they have achieved a
kind of stasis between exterior and interior. The
storm that comes is not a hurricane, but it is difficult
and it is hurtful. There is the transitoriness of today
and tomorrow, (could Tracy love Noah if Noah were
a man?) the loss of freshness (youth flees, lovers of
youth--on whatever level--are blind--and the
mourning for it. However, if as Noah is seen at the
end of the book, petting the dog that he lost in the
park, a person who has benefited, and can make
something out of what he wanted so much to begin
with, then it comes not as polemic or screed. Tracy
and Noah are made equal throughout the novel. The ending is a sort of happy one, though the
grudging acceptance is too quick, but this is little
cavil against a book that seems not to have come
across artist indoctrination. It is unapologetic. Even
the passages of poetry (and there are many) show the
stains underneath, the pain of sex, fear, failed
marriages, losing, of winning for a time, the St. Vitus
dance of Fatwa, the sadness and the guilt and
sublimation of Noah, Tracy, Louis, the wisdom of
Reid, the finding of justification in literature for what
some human hearts feel. There is little is left out. But monolithic groups of all kinds will take this book
and seek in it what they want to find. It is a definitive,
clear eyed, honest novel, but for them, thinking and
considering is just not done. Flags and parades and sermons and psychobabble from unintelligent persons
are easier to digest. The book is excellent, well
thought out, decent and fair minded. It doesn't
matter in the long run, however, which of course is
not the fault of the writer in the least. It's just mental
vigilantes of whatever topic is hot at the moment, on
the Sassy Jelly Show or Court TV who say this is
right, this is wrong, end of discussion. I've seen
enough of human nature to know how it works. "The
Coming Storm" doesn't stand a prayer. Sorry, I
guess I'm being bipolar again.
end
Rating: 
Summary: Throughly enjoyable
Review: I bought this book on a hunch that it would be a good read. I was right. I was a little put off at first by the taboo subject addressed (Student/Teacher relationships). Especially since I have a 16 year old son! But the author presents the material in a sensitive way that made it quite believable. The book is written from different characters perspectives. This was annoying at times, and I have to agree with other reviews that this was distracting. Sometimes I wished that the story was told strictly from Tracy's perspective. Overall though, I really liked the story and the characters were richly drawn.
Rating:
Summary: Fulfillment
Review: Fulfillment; no, not the coming out kind, rather the fulfillment from finding purpose and doing well by doing good.
The real story here is about a small school headmaster stumbling through his days and nights as he tries to come to grips with ambivalent feelings about his life, his values and his value.
It is a riveting story with an uncertain outcome throughout.
Rating:
Summary: Not quite "A Separate Peace"
Review: The author is quite blatantly influenced by "A Separate Peace" - enough so to mention it quite a few times in the text of this novel. While I did enjoy the book, I felt in parts that the writing was tedious - must every thought and every action of every character be pondered and analyzed to the death? I ended up skipping over many paragraphs just because I didn't want to read a 100-word character reaction to another character saying something as innane as "That's odd." There are quite a few characters in the book that seem to be headed towards full development (Libby, Claire, etc) then suddenly drop off to nowhere, leaving their personal stories incomplete. That aside, the story is good and the words vibrant. The story, which primarily revolves around a troubled 15 yr old student falls in love with his 25 year old teacher, is interesting.. you can feel the aching emotion of the characters embroiled in a relationship that is both illicit and doomed to fail. How do you walk away from loving someone you aren't supposed to love? All in all, Mr. Russell is a good storyteller.. a few too many run-on plot developments (that go nowhere) but a vivid imagination and a gift for telling a story so completely that you feel as if you are in the world he's painted.
Rating:
Summary: not a bad read... light summer reading
Review: great little book if you're taking a long train ride or plane trip... lots of intertwining stories, love, lust, unrequited love, statitory rape, fear of AIDS, a coming out story... all those things that could easily become one of the many cheesy, cookie cutter gay books, but too well written for that catagory
Rating:
Summary: Peering Into Another World
Review: This is the first Paul Russell novel I've read, and will definitely not be the last. From the multiple perspectives of its main characters to the lyrical presentation of life in a sleepy upstate New York town, THE COMING STORM takes the best elements of classic literature and mixes it with a modern take on lives in turmoil and secret obsessions.
Rating:
Summary: A thoughtful Insight into Love
Review: I read this book as part of my summer reading for my gay/lesbian studies class. I would recommend it to teacher and student alike either gay or straight. It is an interesting and insightful look at more than the sexual encounter that provokes the Coming Storm . The characters come across as real people living in real life situations who are dealing with the emotions and feelings that make us all tick. Paul Russel sees that basic human element of love as the centerpeice of his novel and attempts to get the reader to think about more than the ages of the two main characters involved. Particularly, I liked the development of the concept of "gay people loving and being loved in return" against all odds and against the parameters of the straight-dominated society which sets the rules. It is a very interesting novel and one which will shed insight into the dilemas faced by Gay and Lesbian people. I was sorry to see it end!
Rating:
Summary: A quaintly american Bildungsroman
Review: Apart from its overtly gay ueber-tones, this book could, for most readers unacquainted with american preppy schools, appear to be set in a gone-by era of school uniforms and authoritarian single-sex institutions. Only the occasional allusion such as "they wore their outsized jeans implausibly low on their hips, the ribbed waistlines of their boxer shorts showing a full two inches" is there to remind us that the story is truly contemporary. This quaint charm of blazer-clad twinks strolling the grounds of a bucolic campus may have been part of its attraction for a reader grown in a country where these institutions are a world apart. The come-out twist on the age-old tradition of the Bildungsroman certainly does appeal to gay readers, yet it may appear a little bit too obvious, bordering on a marketing trick, for a book destined to the ghetto of "gay&lesbian fiction" in present-day american cataloguing. Happily, there was no such a market niche when Thomas Mann wrote "Der Zauberberg", which is why it is a universal masterpiece, which this book is certainly far from. ....
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