Michael

Rating:
Summary: Intriguing and sensual
Review: Flesh's new book concerns Stephen, a man who may or may not be dying of AIDS, who is mourning the loss of his lover Robert who died 3 years ago. Stephen is visited by a group of cultists, where he experiences a sort of awakening. The end of the world is coming and he is not prepared. Stephen then begins an inner journey in the world where he finds God's true nature as well as his own. Flesh's style is potent and beautiful, and I found the book quite mesmerizing, and yet certain sections seemed to need more fleshing out. As perfectly as I could visualize this story as a movie, I never entirely connected to Stephen as a person.

Rating:
Summary: A truly haunting novel
Review: I love and am haunted by this book because of the way Flesh is able to convince me that the end of the world really will happen on a hot Sunday in the Village -- that we will ascend, intertwined with our memories. The beauty and poignance of Michael are sometimes too much to bear. As with Flesh's other work, this is an exploration of loneliness, perfectly pitched -- Flesh knows the way cigarette smoke looks floating out a bedroom window, and the desperation of a man whose loved ones have ceased to be. And yet, at the end, there's salvation -- or seems to be. Anyway, Flesh has recently been compared to Burroughs and Genet, but in his deepest explorations of the stark human soul reminds me more of the late Richard Yates.

Rating:
Summary: The dream of life -- and not just a homoerotic tale
Review: In Henry Flesh's fantastic new book, we are taken on a dream journey and granted a moving meditation on the nature of memory, loss and mortality -- all under the insidious, still massively encroaching specter of AIDS. As the story begins, Henry Flesh's new fatalistic protagonist, Stephen, is in mourning over his dead lover and still trying to reconcile himself with his turbulent past -- a past filled with glimmering joys, abandonment and regret, at which point his growing dread takes human form as he receives a portentous visitation: three (as in the mystical number) members of a religious cult, the Children of Michael, appear at his door, cheerfully announcing that the end is near. "The Archangel Michael is coming." This sets up the rest of the narrative, in which we are taken down the corridors of man's mind, his ravaged memory, and a kind of hot fever dream coinciding with a stunning development: news of the break-out of actual nuclear war, between Russia and a former Soviet Republic, and -- in a kind of spectacular wish-fulfillment fantasy - no less than the end of the world as we know it.

Haunting, soulful and deeply moving - this is a wonderful book by an important artist. I can only wonder where Henry Flesh will take us next.

Rating:
Summary: Modern life during wartime...
Review: Michael is at once disturbing and deeply moving. Set in the East Village of New York in an apocalyptic future with Blade Runner atmospherics, the reader is immediately immersed in a world of both terminal despair and an odd excitement. It is not at all surprising, in such a place, that portents appear. We experience viscerally every memory, every thought, every action in an ambiance of anxiety, dread, and even joy. Michael is a work of intense, impassioned realism, unlike any book I have read before.

Rating:
Summary: Not So Great
Review: This author won a Lambda Literary Award for another book called MASSAGE in 1999 (perhaps I should have read that one). This book called MICHAEL wasn't a big HIT for me (I was hopeful since my name is Michael). It's more like a short story about a middle-aged gay man who is trying to find meaning in his life as he is about to 'follow the Light' to his death and be reunited to those he loves in the Heavens. There are some incidents that are brushed upon that clearly make him feel guilty about the way he (Stephen, the main character) lives his life. It got into a Christian religious tangent mixed with some homoerotic parts that weren't really necessary. Then, there's this whole 'end of the world' scenario with a nuclear bombing in Russia and planes disappearing & crashing in NY & elsewhere (a bit sinister since this was published in 2000--prior to 9-11-01). It's almost like the author is writing a story for himself about how he hopes the circumstances will be when he dies. When I think of this it makes it a bit more interesting.

Rating:
Summary: Not So Great
Review: This author won a Lambda Literary Award for another book called MASSAGE in 1999 (perhaps I should have read that one). This book called MICHAEL wasn't a big HIT for me (I was hopeful since my name is Michael). It's more like a short story about a middle-aged gay man who is trying to find meaning in his life as he is about to 'follow the Light' to his death and be reunited to those he loves in the Heavens. There are some incidents that are brushed upon that clearly make him feel guilty about the way he (Stephen, the main character) lives his life. It got into a Christian religious tangent mixed with some homoerotic parts that weren't really necessary. Then, there's this whole 'end of the world' scenario with a nuclear bombing in Russia and planes disappearing & crashing in NY & elsewhere (a bit sinister since this was published in 2000--prior to 9-11-01). It's almost like the author is writing a story for himself about how he hopes the circumstances will be when he dies. When I think of this it makes it a bit more interesting.