Scan barcode
savaging's review
4.0
It's hard for me to recommend this book to others because there were many times I was uncomfortable (are these Black characters just stereotypes? these Bannock characters? these Chinese characters? and should I feel fine that this kid is selling sex to adults?).
But in general, I love that Spanbauer wrote a different kind of Western. This is a West willing to get in a bar brawl against Manifest Destiny. It's a story showing how vice can be virtuous and virtue can grow vicious. But mostly, it's a celebration of some characters who are awful and wonderful and mostly come to tragic ends.
But in general, I love that Spanbauer wrote a different kind of Western. This is a West willing to get in a bar brawl against Manifest Destiny. It's a story showing how vice can be virtuous and virtue can grow vicious. But mostly, it's a celebration of some characters who are awful and wonderful and mostly come to tragic ends.
yorgos_a's review
3.0
WARNING: heavy spoilers ahead.
I am not sure what dangerous writing is, but, after reading this novel, I think I can take a guess:
1. Pick one or more controversial topics. For instance, incest, child rape, gory amputations, hurtful racist slurs
2. Build a story around these topics
3. Make sure there are plenty of plot twists to outsmart your reader
4. Voilà!
Having said that, reading “The man who fell in love with the moon” was overall an enjoyable experience from the literary perspective, and if you don’t carry major trauma with any of its controversial topics, you’re on the safe side of enjoying it. This is partly because the story elements are so over the top that it’s hard to perceive them as realistic.
I’ll first mention the merits of the novel:
You cannot deny that Tom Spanbauer is a master of the English language. His descriptions of people and places are so vivid that you feel you’re right there, in Idaho, with the protagonists. It made me want to visit Idaho to witness the raw beauty of its landscapes firsthand. I also appreciated a lot the Western drawback of the story and the cocky attitude towards sex. A Western full of sexually fluid whores, dicks, alcohol, and locoweed. What’s not to like? From what I read, this novel probably also served as a proverbial middle finger to the AIDS-fueled anti-queer political climate in the USA of the late 1980’s – time around which this project was developed. This is all good!
I won’t talk much about the treatment of sexual orientation in this novel, because all the main characters are by default bisexual, and since I am not bisexual, I’ll have to take the writer’s word for an accurate description of it. To me, it sounds plausible that, in a time before the term “homosexual” was widely spread, people were sexually more fluid as they didn’t have to go by specific labels. I’d love to hear from bisexual readers about how accurate these depictions are.
Now the stuff that disappointed me by the end of the reading:
My biggest issue is with the treatment of race and racism. At first, I thought that this novel wanted to say something substantial about the genocidal acts of the US government upon Native Americans. The novel includes a very real and heart-wrenching description of what genocide must feel like to the victims. It describes pretty accurately the hopeless dismantling of traditional societies by colonialism. That’s when my love for the novel was at its peak, and I was ready to forgive previous descriptions of the main white protagonists as “not like other tybos” (a word the main character uses for Whites).
However, the writer’s interest in that topic faded away very quickly. At the end, it turned out to be no more than a side plot; as also was the arrival and swift lynching of four black characters, which greenlighted the abundant use of the n-word in the novel. At that point, I saw clearly through the novel. Weirdly, it reminded me of Harper Lee’s “to kill a mockingbird” in the way it treats racism: unlike anyone else in the fictional town of Excellent, Idado, our main characters, for reasons nowhere explained, are welcoming to the black visitors and they treat them with humanity and dignity. The feeling I got was that, just like Atticus Finch, these characters were too good to be true. The novel treats racism as moral bankruptcy and not as a systemic problem, which can affect “good people” as much as “bad people”. I would have liked more nuance. It felt condescending and missing the point of why racism is vile completely.
From the beginning of the novel, I wondered whether a white writer has the right to tell the story from the perspective of a person of color. This is an open question, but I feel that today that would be an absolute no-no. But maybe in 1991, this was still kinda ok. I am not sure if it’s an accident or a premeditated move, but a plot twist at the end of the novel, maybe the most annoying one, allows the writer to slip away from having to deal with this issue.
Child rape and prostitution or incest did not affect me that much because they felt for some reason less tangible or realistic to me. Maybe it’s because the writer didn’t treat them with the gravity they deserve. But I can totally understand other readers’ issues with them.
Overall, the book deserves a read, but I hope Spanbauer’s later novels show more maturity in the way he treats vital topics such as racism. I’ll definitely read some more of him.
I am not sure what dangerous writing is, but, after reading this novel, I think I can take a guess:
1. Pick one or more controversial topics. For instance, incest, child rape, gory amputations, hurtful racist slurs
2. Build a story around these topics
3. Make sure there are plenty of plot twists to outsmart your reader
4. Voilà!
Having said that, reading “The man who fell in love with the moon” was overall an enjoyable experience from the literary perspective, and if you don’t carry major trauma with any of its controversial topics, you’re on the safe side of enjoying it. This is partly because the story elements are so over the top that it’s hard to perceive them as realistic.
I’ll first mention the merits of the novel:
You cannot deny that Tom Spanbauer is a master of the English language. His descriptions of people and places are so vivid that you feel you’re right there, in Idaho, with the protagonists. It made me want to visit Idaho to witness the raw beauty of its landscapes firsthand. I also appreciated a lot the Western drawback of the story and the cocky attitude towards sex. A Western full of sexually fluid whores, dicks, alcohol, and locoweed. What’s not to like? From what I read, this novel probably also served as a proverbial middle finger to the AIDS-fueled anti-queer political climate in the USA of the late 1980’s – time around which this project was developed. This is all good!
I won’t talk much about the treatment of sexual orientation in this novel, because all the main characters are by default bisexual, and since I am not bisexual, I’ll have to take the writer’s word for an accurate description of it. To me, it sounds plausible that, in a time before the term “homosexual” was widely spread, people were sexually more fluid as they didn’t have to go by specific labels. I’d love to hear from bisexual readers about how accurate these depictions are.
Now the stuff that disappointed me by the end of the reading:
My biggest issue is with the treatment of race and racism. At first, I thought that this novel wanted to say something substantial about the genocidal acts of the US government upon Native Americans. The novel includes a very real and heart-wrenching description of what genocide must feel like to the victims. It describes pretty accurately the hopeless dismantling of traditional societies by colonialism. That’s when my love for the novel was at its peak, and I was ready to forgive previous descriptions of the main white protagonists as “not like other tybos” (a word the main character uses for Whites).
However, the writer’s interest in that topic faded away very quickly. At the end, it turned out to be no more than a side plot; as also was the arrival and swift lynching of four black characters, which greenlighted the abundant use of the n-word in the novel. At that point, I saw clearly through the novel. Weirdly, it reminded me of Harper Lee’s “to kill a mockingbird” in the way it treats racism: unlike anyone else in the fictional town of Excellent, Idado, our main characters, for reasons nowhere explained, are welcoming to the black visitors and they treat them with humanity and dignity. The feeling I got was that, just like Atticus Finch, these characters were too good to be true. The novel treats racism as moral bankruptcy and not as a systemic problem, which can affect “good people” as much as “bad people”. I would have liked more nuance. It felt condescending and missing the point of why racism is vile completely.
From the beginning of the novel, I wondered whether a white writer has the right to tell the story from the perspective of a person of color. This is an open question, but I feel that today that would be an absolute no-no. But maybe in 1991, this was still kinda ok. I am not sure if it’s an accident or a premeditated move, but a plot twist at the end of the novel, maybe the most annoying one, allows the writer to slip away from having to deal with this issue.
Child rape and prostitution or incest did not affect me that much because they felt for some reason less tangible or realistic to me. Maybe it’s because the writer didn’t treat them with the gravity they deserve. But I can totally understand other readers’ issues with them.
Overall, the book deserves a read, but I hope Spanbauer’s later novels show more maturity in the way he treats vital topics such as racism. I’ll definitely read some more of him.
justinwelchsf's review
5.0
Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant! The narrator is half Native American and bisexual and grows up in a small town brothel in Idaho in the 1880s.
mehitabels's review
3.0
"Almost all of them — hardly an exception, afraid of being who they are right now."
"...his prayer in Indian how it sounds when you cry alone."
"Fucking was the same way as with everything else--what you thought you were doing was not what you were doing. What you thought you were doing was sucking and penetrating and kissing, holding, and ejaculating. What you were doing, though, was telling a story."
"...his prayer in Indian how it sounds when you cry alone."
"Fucking was the same way as with everything else--what you thought you were doing was not what you were doing. What you thought you were doing was sucking and penetrating and kissing, holding, and ejaculating. What you were doing, though, was telling a story."
krish_'s review
3.0
If you're sensitive, conventional, religious or just easily offended - do not read this book. Stay far away. Sex is like breathing for these people, a way of survival, which is why the reader has to understand and then accept these characters for who and what they are. Spanbauer's language is difficult in the beginning and definitely takes getting used to but when you do, its quite worth it. You just have to understand that these people come from a wholly different place, with different beliefs and lifestyles. Once you get past that, you actually grow to love them.
jemsizzleton's review
4.0
I fell in and out of love with this book several times. I admire its willingness to make me uncomfortable, but def had a couple "oh cone on, really?" moments. Much of it is really beautiful and will mess with your mind on the topics of sexuality in a unique framing of the cowboys-n-indians old west. Loved the characters and themes. The ideas of the human condition playing with ideas of race, gender, humanity and sex. Def got a little over the top for me at times, and I sometimes wondered about people of various cultures conveniently crossing the stage so the themes could feel more wholly addressed. Overall, I was into it, and the parts I would trash talk would make this rant bizarre and hilarious, but also a spoiler, so I will zip my lip. If you ever read it, be prepared fir a whole lot of cocks to be whizzing about the cowboy saloon in a total fuck fest, and then tell me what you think. End had some WTH moments. Very end was cool, though equally odd. I learned some stuff about being "bendache" that felt authentic to a clueless person on the topic like me. But I enjoyed attaining that knowledge and how I did so. Worth reading for sure, but brace yourself.
papsmearino's review
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
vanhooon's review
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
piierrote's review
challenging
dark
1.0
weird book, genuinely turned my stomach a lot. from a pure technical writing standpoint, it’s so good and captivating and the only reason i kept reading (and the only reason it’s getting a 2 star rating). i simply can’t get past the amount of incest/almost incest there is… sexually troubling book i think. the race aspect of this book is also Not Good and i dare say racist. glad its over and i don’t have to read it anymore…
joejoh's review
4.0
This book has some wonderful prose. I really enjoyed it, despite flaws that other reviewers have mentioned. I can recommend it based on the language alone. Warning! This book contains graphic content and language, and is definitely NOT for children.