Half-Moon Scar

Rating:
Summary: I Hate Myself and I Want to Die - The Raven Chronicles
Review:
[...]at the core of the book, Amy and Gavin’s destructive self-hatred remains mysterious. The events of the book do little more than hint at why they both hate themselves and want to die. Talking about childhood games, Gina and Amy say:
“Red Rover. Swinging Status. Kick the Can. “Smear the Queer?” “Smear the Queer.” ... “Little did we know.”
Amy doesn’t reveal any explanation at to why they share this destructive impulse. The only common point between them is that they are both gay. What about their experience growing up in a small town where boyfriends are supposed to have girlfriends and girlfriends, boyfriends leads to anorexia and self-mutilation? Male-anorexia is a rare disease, and yet from the story of Gavin’s growing-up seems to vary little from the experience of most gay children. Typically, a narrative of this sort would work toward some terrible secret, and then when the character reveals their terrible secret ala some therapy session or forced confession, the plot would be satisfied. Half-Moon Scar doesn’t operate in a world like this. The plot doesn’t work toward a revelation. The terrible secrets are all placed out in the open pretty quickly.
I suppose ultimately the story asserts that anorexia (or self-mutilation) can’t be understood. Regardless of weather the narrator places the root cause on a bad childhood, or a genetic disposition, a constant and utter contempt and misunderstanding, or some particularly brutal comment about his weight, Half-Moon Scar gets down the lasting disease of no longer being a kid. I feel relief when I drive past my middle school and know I don’t have to go there and sit at a desk and pretend to be like everyone else.


Rating:
Summary: Cause and Effect
Review: Although mildly predictable, this novel is a powerful read for anyone interested in how one gets from point A to point B with a twist or two inbetween. In a style reminiscent of The Sparrow, Amy's story is told in two times, her childhood with Gavin and Gia and the rediscovery of her childhood friends as an adult. At times difficult to follow, the style nevertheless leads to two stories; Amy's battle with Gavin's anorexia and Amy's discovery of herself.

In the end, it's a good book for a slightly haunting read, but it's not a romance so don't expect a cure-all ending.

Rating:
Summary: When People Bleed, They Let Things Go
Review: An examination of scars rooted in the experiences that alter our terrain-both emotional & physical, tangible & invisible. Just like the similie Green employs, this novel filled me with a strange feeling that "snuck into my chest, a feeling like the time-lapsed vine we'd seen in a movie at school-tendrils reaching out, snagging my heart, wrapping me up and squeezing."

I love love love this book.

Rating:
Summary: When People Bleed, They Let Things Go
Review: An examination of scars rooted in the experiences that alter our terrain-both emotional & physical, tangible & invisible. Just like the similie Green employs, this novel filled me with a strange feeling that "snuck into my chest, a feeling like the time-lapsed vine we'd seen in a movie at school-tendrils reaching out, snagging my heart, wrapping me up and squeezing."

I love love love this book.

Rating:
Summary: Scars run deep
Review: The lead character in half-moon scar, Amy goes home for a visit and ends up on a pilgrimage. Her tiny home town has changed and her family has moved on however, she remains tied to the past. Her journey has her trapped between the past and her future. She has many hidden scars which are opened wide with the resurfacing of two friends Gavin and Gina. Their relationships are complex and symbolic. The cross dressing Gavin is starving himself by withdrawing from food and the world while he gorges himself with 70's sitcoms (examples of the way life should be...) Gina is a mystery dyke who keeps to herself and withdrawn from the Gavin who shares her home and herstory. Amy stays to "help" Gavin and struggles between the scars of the past and the challenge of her adult life. Everything seems to come together when Robin her partner in Seattle comes to town after an accident.

This story touches the reader deep down in those dusty childhood places. The pains of coming out and being strong flow deeply through Green's book.

Rating:
Summary: Healing the hollowed parts
Review: This breathtaking novel maps a few weeks in the life of Amy who returns to her small hometown to consider her relationship with her girlfriend. She encounters two of her childhood friends, Gina (who now works in a lesbian bar) and Gavin (who is dangerously anorexic), and together the three collide into and reconcile past pain and experiences. Banding with Gina to help Gavin, Amy rekindles her attraction to Gina. Sifting through the ebb and flow of memory, she also comes to understand more about her continuing self-mutilation. Echoing aspects of Eric Swanson's "The Boy in the Lake", Green gives us a beautiful novel exploring the invisible and visible scars we all inflict on ourselves and others. My favorite line from the novel: "The hollows of the body were what filled up with hurt, and you couldn't starve them away."

Rating:
Summary: Visible & Invisible Scars
Review: When Seattle's Allison Green was ten years old and living in Wisconsin, she had a male best friend who enjoyed cross-dressing. Over the years, she lost touch with him and later learned that he had come out as did she. Green began thinking about kids who grow up together and are destined to come out in their later years. "Most people I know had sexual experiences with other children when they were pre-adolescents, says Green. "How might those experiences be different between children who will later come out, and how might adults who have had these experiences need to resolve lingering feelings of shame and alienation?"

In her debut novel, "half-moon scar," Green explores these questions in a story about two lesbians, Amy and Gina, and a gay man, Gavin, who were childhood friends during the 60's and 70's. Amy now in her thirties, lives with her lover Robin in Seattle. When she returns to her small-town home of Willow Bay, Wisconsin for a visit, she finds that, like herself, her old friends Gina and Gavin are struggling to resolve feelings of guilt associated with their childhood desires. Each of the old friends has been scarred by the past in a different way. Amy is self-mutilative. Gina is remote and disconnected. Gavin is anorexic. As past and present collide, Amy needs to reconcile her long-standing attraction to Gina as well as her past sexual experimentation with Gavin before she can make a true commitment to Robin.

As I read "half-moon scar," I wondered how much of the story was autobiographical because Green had lived in Wisconsin before coming to Seattle and becoming a writing professor.

"None of the plot is autobiographical, but the place is. I lived in Green Bay, Wisconsin, for five years of my childhood, and the street names and houses are actual places in Green Bay," said Green. I did have a childhood friend, a boy, who loved to dress-up in my thrift store prom dresses. I heard later that he came out, as I did, and that got me thinking about what it meant for two queer kids to be playing together and growing up together."

"I've never self-mutilated, as Amy does, but I had periods in my life where I fantasized about doing it. I suppose Amy is a kind of alternative universe version of myself -- the person I might have been had I been born and raised in Wisconsin, instead of just living there for a few years."

As a reader, I found the way Green wrote "half-moon scar" amazing. She formatted the novel by alternating every other chapter from present to past. I was confused by how the chapters alternated at first. My confusion eventually turned to compassion for the characters of Amy, Gina and Gavin.

According to Green, "It took a long time to figure out the structure of the novel. I resisted the alternating structure for a long time, thinking that it had been done too many times before. But ultimately I felt that the novel was most powerful when events were juxtaposed in certain ways. I could have done the book in chronological order, but that would have separated events that affected each other in an artificial way. I could have woven the past in with the present, but for Amy there was a major break with the past when she
left Willow Bay. Events of the past have fossilized in her mind; they stand distinct, themselves, almost outside of time."

The title "half-moon scar" referred to the scar on Gavin's nose. Green believes, more generally, the novel is about the visible and invisible scars we carry with us and the ways that our experiences get written on our bodies.

As a romantic, I found the book disturbing in one sense. I believe in monogamous relationships and one particular scene unbalanced my belief system. I understood this scene took place as part the characters healing process. It forced me to look within at my feelings - even though I was uncomfortable doing so.

If you want to figure out the relationship I mentioned, pick up and read "half-moon scar."

Rating:
Summary: Visible & Invisible Scars
Review: When Seattle's Allison Green was ten years old and living in Wisconsin, she had a male best friend who enjoyed cross-dressing. Over the years, she lost touch with him and later learned that he had come out as did she. Green began thinking about kids who grow up together and are destined to come out in their later years. "Most people I know had sexual experiences with other children when they were pre-adolescents, says Green. "How might those experiences be different between children who will later come out, and how might adults who have had these experiences need to resolve lingering feelings of shame and alienation?"

In her debut novel, "half-moon scar," Green explores these questions in a story about two lesbians, Amy and Gina, and a gay man, Gavin, who were childhood friends during the 60's and 70's. Amy now in her thirties, lives with her lover Robin in Seattle. When she returns to her small-town home of Willow Bay, Wisconsin for a visit, she finds that, like herself, her old friends Gina and Gavin are struggling to resolve feelings of guilt associated with their childhood desires. Each of the old friends has been scarred by the past in a different way. Amy is self-mutilative. Gina is remote and disconnected. Gavin is anorexic. As past and present collide, Amy needs to reconcile her long-standing attraction to Gina as well as her past sexual experimentation with Gavin before she can make a true commitment to Robin.

As I read "half-moon scar," I wondered how much of the story was autobiographical because Green had lived in Wisconsin before coming to Seattle and becoming a writing professor.

"None of the plot is autobiographical, but the place is. I lived in Green Bay, Wisconsin, for five years of my childhood, and the street names and houses are actual places in Green Bay," said Green. I did have a childhood friend, a boy, who loved to dress-up in my thrift store prom dresses. I heard later that he came out, as I did, and that got me thinking about what it meant for two queer kids to be playing together and growing up together."

"I've never self-mutilated, as Amy does, but I had periods in my life where I fantasized about doing it. I suppose Amy is a kind of alternative universe version of myself -- the person I might have been had I been born and raised in Wisconsin, instead of just living there for a few years."

As a reader, I found the way Green wrote "half-moon scar" amazing. She formatted the novel by alternating every other chapter from present to past. I was confused by how the chapters alternated at first. My confusion eventually turned to compassion for the characters of Amy, Gina and Gavin.

According to Green, "It took a long time to figure out the structure of the novel. I resisted the alternating structure for a long time, thinking that it had been done too many times before. But ultimately I felt that the novel was most powerful when events were juxtaposed in certain ways. I could have done the book in chronological order, but that would have separated events that affected each other in an artificial way. I could have woven the past in with the present, but for Amy there was a major break with the past when she
left Willow Bay. Events of the past have fossilized in her mind; they stand distinct, themselves, almost outside of time."

The title "half-moon scar" referred to the scar on Gavin's nose. Green believes, more generally, the novel is about the visible and invisible scars we carry with us and the ways that our experiences get written on our bodies.

As a romantic, I found the book disturbing in one sense. I believe in monogamous relationships and one particular scene unbalanced my belief system. I understood this scene took place as part the characters healing process. It forced me to look within at my feelings - even though I was uncomfortable doing so.

If you want to figure out the relationship I mentioned, pick up and read "half-moon scar."