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gerhard's review
5.0
It is fitting that Paul Russell bookends his first novel with a seamless sequel that is the best book this peerless author has written to date. I loved the way Russell continues the story of Lydia, Anatole, Chris and Leigh in a way that comments on some of the most divisive socio-political issues facing the gay community today.
The biggest set-piece is the marriage between Anatole and his long-time lover Rafa, in the wake of New York State allowing gay marriage. Russell’s depiction of the married life of this middle-aged gay couple is heartbreakingly honest; he slowly ratchets up the tension for the wedding banquet itself, and these pages alone are one of the best advertisements for gay marriage (and happiness) possible.
Russell is hardly a sentimental author though, with his first novel showing a penchant for the psychopathology of desire and deviancy. In other words, he likes writing about fucked-up characters and their lives.
And none are more fucked-up than Chris Havilland, owner of the Immaculate Blue record store in Poughkeepsie, whose dark journey towards abasement forms the heart of this often grim but important novel.
I think Russell is a difficult author to like, simply because he writes about such difficult people. He certainly has no delusions about his characters himself, at one point describing Anatole as a “borderline paedophile” and Lydia as “a sad desperate cradle-robber”.
But the slow build up to the wedding banquet and the idyllic elaboration of gay marriage as a bastion of Western convention soon gives way to a far darker and more essential confrontation: between Chris and Leigh himself, the eponymous Boy of the Mall, who disappears under such dramatic circumstances at the end of [b:The Salt Point|119005|The Salt Point|Paul Russell|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1312026434s/119005.jpg|817131].
I was quite dismayed when I began to have some sense of where Russell was taking his story; the bleakness it plummets in the end is very despairing, and does not make for a comfortable read at all. But there is truth here, as dark as it, and love too, piercing the gloom.
The biggest set-piece is the marriage between Anatole and his long-time lover Rafa, in the wake of New York State allowing gay marriage. Russell’s depiction of the married life of this middle-aged gay couple is heartbreakingly honest; he slowly ratchets up the tension for the wedding banquet itself, and these pages alone are one of the best advertisements for gay marriage (and happiness) possible.
Russell is hardly a sentimental author though, with his first novel showing a penchant for the psychopathology of desire and deviancy. In other words, he likes writing about fucked-up characters and their lives.
And none are more fucked-up than Chris Havilland, owner of the Immaculate Blue record store in Poughkeepsie, whose dark journey towards abasement forms the heart of this often grim but important novel.
I think Russell is a difficult author to like, simply because he writes about such difficult people. He certainly has no delusions about his characters himself, at one point describing Anatole as a “borderline paedophile” and Lydia as “a sad desperate cradle-robber”.
But the slow build up to the wedding banquet and the idyllic elaboration of gay marriage as a bastion of Western convention soon gives way to a far darker and more essential confrontation: between Chris and Leigh himself, the eponymous Boy of the Mall, who disappears under such dramatic circumstances at the end of [b:The Salt Point|119005|The Salt Point|Paul Russell|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1312026434s/119005.jpg|817131].
I was quite dismayed when I began to have some sense of where Russell was taking his story; the bleakness it plummets in the end is very despairing, and does not make for a comfortable read at all. But there is truth here, as dark as it, and love too, piercing the gloom.
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