Edinburgh

Rating:
Summary: A cautionary tale
Review: "Edinburgh" is a deeply moving novel about the damage inflicted by a child molester to the lives of his victims. It seemed to me to examine how actions have repercussions beyond the immediate - how the past is carried around within people, and how it can influence and compromise individual day-to-day moral behaviour. In those senses, although "Edinburgh" is no doubt a "gay novel", the themes Chee explores are also universal ones. The book is far better and more interesting than many other novels because of that breadth of vision.

It would give the plot away too much to go into more detail, other than to say that the author's writing style is often a challenge to read: events are frequently referred to obliquely or alluded to rather than described directly. Once you get used to this, the emotional effect is created by a feeling of close proximity to events rather than by stark realistic descriptions of them.

The overall feel this novel gave me was one of trying to understand human failure and the effects of such failure, and by doing so, to attempt to learn.

Rating:
Summary: An Ingeniously Conceived Modern Myth
Review: Alexander Chee's first novel is the tale of a demon fox who is finally captured. Aphias Zee or Fee is an American of Korean and Scottish descent. In early age Fee's grandfather tells him the tale of Lady Tammamo, a fox who fell in love and, after being ridiculed by the community after her husband's death, engulfed herself and her husband's body in flames. He believes himself to be a fox in the shape of a man. Greek mythology informs his destiny as well, subtly setting the stage upon which the events of his life play. Yet, above the decorous theatre is a profoundly human story of Fee's experience growing up in Maine and, along with eleven other boys, suffering sexual abuse at the hands of a Boys Chorus instructor named Big Eric. Sex and suicide surround Fee through his entire adolescence and teenage years. He learns somehow to survive with the elements of creation and death orbiting him constantly, but it is an empty sort of existence for him. Passion is expended on lovers he doesn't care for. The guilt of his former instructor attaches itself to him as he discovers quickly that he is a homosexual himself. His natural desire is tragically intertwined with the other's perversity. His first love, Peter, becomes for him a distorted mirror image of all he is not: blonde, straight and freed by death. Thus, he embarks on an endless struggle to merge with this image, to fall into it, be devoured and emerge cleansed by flame. Despite surviving (barely) through college, making close friends and finding a lover, Bridely, who he marries in a commitment ceremony, Fee is unable to escape from his past and the conception of his own destiny militated by his demon fox spirit. He is paired finally with a spectre from the past and the mirror image he longed to meld into.

The first most striking quality of Chee's unique prose style is his use of metaphor. With a lyrical intensity, the world is shaped by Fee's subjective understand of what surrounds him. Like the best of Eudora Welty's stories, the author uses metaphor to beautifully invoke experience with hyper-intensive feeling. The most emotionally unsettling moments of the book are captured with startling imagery. These moments not only convey the essential elements of the story, but also distort the world in a way to disturb and inspire your conscious interpretation of it. The understanding of desire and love are wildly twisted to unsettle and force you to think of the nature of their meaning. You are pushed to re-evaluate your own experience: "Do you remember what it was like, to be young? You do. Was there any innocence? No. Things were exactly what they looked like. If anyone tries for innocence, it's the adult, moving forward, forgetting." The structure of the novel impresses the need for these contemplations all the more. The first person, present tense of the narration impresses a sense of immediacy relevant for the dramatization of the characters' consciousness. Noticeably, the quotation marks of speech are experimentally removed letting the words uttered float freely in the air along with the sensitive impressions of the characters' thoughts. Yet, Chee's impressive expansion of the novels form does not delineate from the impact of the tale told. Although it is anything but a light read, it is still a thoroughly engaging and enjoyable novel. This is anything but a common coming of age story. The book is packed with intense, fully realised characters each of whom radiate a need to have their own stories told. The primary setting of Maine, so often an idyllic stage in fiction, is depicted as a troubled landscape, both turbulent and beautiful. It is interesting the final scene takes place in Cape Elizabeth's Fort Williams, an army fort well stocked in WWII that never witnessed the battles it was prepared to face. Now it is a popular park. The ruins left may speak more for the characters they surround than the characters speak for themselves. Sparkling with impressive imagery and powerful wisdom, Edinburgh is an incredible artistic accomplishment and a powerful debut.

Rating:
Summary: smooth start, rough finish
Review: Although the suicides, molestations, and nude adolescent romps at a camp lead by an adult choral director could be seen as extreme, the primary characters keep these devices in check by being well constructed, engaging, and firmly in control during the first part of the novel. Unfortunately, this is reversed in the last quarter. Here an increasingly bizarre and unrealistic plot is forced on the protagonists, who begin to behave in ways that appear contrived and false. Instead of raising my pulse, the jacked up action caused my interest in Fee and Warden to flag. At this point the writing also seemed to become less focused and more opaque. Some passages were almost incomprehensible to me--I suspected proof-reading deficiencies.

Finally, instead of confronting the "fox" and forcing Warden and Fee, in the end, to deal head on with themselves and their relationship, the author chooses abandonment. And that's the way I felt too, deserted.

As an aside, friends who read drafts of friends who write should not let them use "I" where "me" is correct.

Rating:
Summary: A Lambda Award winner for good reason.
Review: An emotionally devasting work of fiction. Alexander Chee is a writer of extravagant talents. Not since "The Hours" have I had to read through so many tears. His prose has a brilliant precision - he communicates a depth feeling - pain, loss, guilt -with an economy of words which is truly impressive.

I'm not going to go into details about the subject matter or describe the many beautifully realized characters. I will conclude these remarks by simply saying that I intend to recommend this heartwrenching novel to everyone I know.

Rating:
Summary: A Lambda Award winner for good reason.
Review: An emotionally devasting work of fiction. Alexander Chee is a writer of extravagant talents. Not since "The Hours" have I had to read through so many tears. His prose has a brilliant precision - he communicates a depth feeling - pain, loss, guilt -with an economy of words which is truly impressive.

I'm not going to go into details about the subject matter or describe the many beautifully realized characters. I will conclude these remarks by simply saying that I intend to recommend this heartwrenching novel to everyone I know.

Rating:
Summary: An interesting first novel....
Review: Edinburgh explores the story of a boy named "Fee," his life as a child and later that of an adult. I was very engrossed in the first 2/3 of the book which focused on Fee growing up, his devasting experiences to him as a child, and those to his friends. It was disturbing, yet intriguing, to see how he dealt with the trauma and experiences. However, the next part of the book took a bit of jarring turn as the point of view immediately switched to another boy. Although I understand the reasoning behind it, I was a bit distracted having to suddenly see "the story" from another viewer. In the last section, it returns to Fee's POV as an adult. Again, it was a bit jarring to switch POVs again, but at least I was familiar with this one. I think it somewhat made me lose interest in the characters and I couldn't wait for the story to end. Don't get me wrong, it was a great build-up of a story the first 2/3 of the book, so I recommend reading it -- I just wish it had a similarly interesting finish. And although the author's disposal of quotation marks was a bit distracting as well to see where conversation began and ended, I see this as a writing style that Chee is shooting for.

Rating:
Summary: Every word is a masterpiece
Review: I would like to recommend this book without giving any of the plot away. The author is Amerasian and in this book he has mixed East and West, an Eastern myth within the form of a Greek tragedy. Like a tragedy, the novel opens with a prologue, which I think should be read at the beginning and end of the book to get the full effect of the story. What follows is not a tragey's parados chorus, but the story of some Maine choir boys. The present tense prose is so lyrical, the reader is drawn in; like a car accident you can't help but look at, even though it may be painful, you read on. The lake at the choir's summer camp appears still, but the author shows that the ripples from the choir master's abuses are waves that run deep, wide, and unseen; they are as devastating as the wake of the Black Plague.

Rating:
Summary: It's NOT about Scotland!
Review: The title is just the very first of one of the many surprises encountered in this extremely well-written, impressive, and multi-layered novel. There are frequent passages which are so on target and gorgeously done that they gave me chills. I did a lot of rereading in parts. This is a novel that eludes simply categorization such as 'Coming Out' or 'Issue' novel. Give it a try. This seems the start of a very promising career for Chee. Can't wait to see what he does next!!!

Rating:
Summary: Chee Rocks....
Review: This book is one of the best books I've read in a long time. I have to say, though, that the first review by Publishers Weekly should not be included here. The reviewer got several major details of the book wrong (Fee's absent father was also a child molester? His father was not absent, nor a child molester!) and seemed not to have actually read the book. Unbelievable.

Anyway, I was deeply touched by this novel. I felt that Chee was not afraid to get to the heart of things, and because he had the courage to enter where no one should enter, I also had courage to follow him. I love how the prose is internal, no chit-chat, just the hard, dark lines of the inside of the mind. It's as if Chee was so committed to his characters, the integrity of his characters, that he allows them to live and speak for themselves and create their own narratives. I forgot that I was reading a novel, I forgot that I was reading something crafted. I was inside the tunnel of Fee's (and Warden's) mind and saw glimpses of my own soul. I wept several times during this read. I will read everything this man has ever written...

Rating:
Summary: A difficult review to write
Review: This is a wonderful, very intense novel, that left me quite stunned at the end of it, which is why this could be a difficult review to write.

Chee's writing is not always the easiest to read, but it has great power and truth. He hauntingly conveys the horror of Fee's situation both as it occurs, and the residual impact on the next twenty years of his life. Chee introduces characters sparingly, and nobody appears for no good reason.

This is not a light book, understandably, but if you have been interested enough by what you have read above to be reading this, then I recommend this novel to you. Go ahead and take the risk, Edinburgh will reward your efforts.

Finally, the above review from Publishers Weekly is incorrect, as it is not Fee who "embarks on a bizarre journey to find his identity, exploring his bisexuality while dabbling in drugs until he finally learns that his own absent father is also an imprisoned pedophile." It is another very important character that goes on that journey.