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aegagrus's review
3.0
It wouldn't be hard to dismiss Margery Kempe as "lots of sex, interspersed with bouts of profundity". It wouldn't be an inaccurate description of what reading this book feels like, either. It would, however, be a crude and unfair simplification.
Glück's central device is parallel description of a 20th-century relationship between two men and (an imaginative retelling of) 15th century English mystic Margery Kempe's relationship with an embodied Jesus Christ. Tying the two together, the narrator is a party to the first relationship and also an authorial character, describing the second relationship as he undertakes to write about it.
Margery Kempe succeeds in exploring a number of themes connected to queer love and identity: the particular frustration of wanting a relationship to be something it cannot be (whether metaphysically or socially proscribed), the role of lust in forming interpersonal attitudes, and the impossible but very real need to feel validated in a (sexual, but also spiritual) relationship. Jesus is a particularly interesting character -- elusive, capricious, intermittently cruel -- adding a depth to Margery's feelings in their own right.
Glück also probes the idea of dissolving the distinction between Margery and the narrator, both experiencing frustrated longing. Here, though, he falters. Attempting to blur the lines, he ends up spending disproportionate time on Margery (in ways that can feel quite repetitive) and directly describing the other relationship only elliptically. This is a shame, because L., the object of the narrator's desire, seems to be an interesting character in much the same way Jesus is an interesting character. It's also a shame because Glück hints at dwelling on many contemporary presences in the story -- his narrator's Jewishness, or AIDS -- but is unwilling to commit enough time to the "present" to go very far with these ideas, preferring instead to explore as much as possible by proxy through long descriptions of Margery and her world. Sometimes this approach succeeds, but I can't help feeling that the work as a whole would have more interesting places to go if more effort was devoted to establishing one of the worlds Glück ultimately wants us to feel dissolving into each other. As I've noted, the writing when it comes to Margery's part of the story could easily be tightened up, making room for more narrative time spent in our world.
Glück's central device is parallel description of a 20th-century relationship between two men and (an imaginative retelling of) 15th century English mystic Margery Kempe's relationship with an embodied Jesus Christ. Tying the two together, the narrator is a party to the first relationship and also an authorial character, describing the second relationship as he undertakes to write about it.
Margery Kempe succeeds in exploring a number of themes connected to queer love and identity: the particular frustration of wanting a relationship to be something it cannot be (whether metaphysically or socially proscribed), the role of lust in forming interpersonal attitudes, and the impossible but very real need to feel validated in a (sexual, but also spiritual) relationship. Jesus is a particularly interesting character -- elusive, capricious, intermittently cruel -- adding a depth to Margery's feelings in their own right.
Glück also probes the idea of dissolving the distinction between Margery and the narrator, both experiencing frustrated longing. Here, though, he falters. Attempting to blur the lines, he ends up spending disproportionate time on Margery (in ways that can feel quite repetitive) and directly describing the other relationship only elliptically. This is a shame, because L., the object of the narrator's desire, seems to be an interesting character in much the same way Jesus is an interesting character. It's also a shame because Glück hints at dwelling on many contemporary presences in the story -- his narrator's Jewishness, or AIDS -- but is unwilling to commit enough time to the "present" to go very far with these ideas, preferring instead to explore as much as possible by proxy through long descriptions of Margery and her world. Sometimes this approach succeeds, but I can't help feeling that the work as a whole would have more interesting places to go if more effort was devoted to establishing one of the worlds Glück ultimately wants us to feel dissolving into each other. As I've noted, the writing when it comes to Margery's part of the story could easily be tightened up, making room for more narrative time spent in our world.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Excrement, Medical content, and Sexual content
Moderate: Alcohol, Antisemitism, and Sexual assault
Minor: Homophobia
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