Reviews

Since I Laid My Burden Down by Brontez Purnell

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dpepin's review against another edition

3.0

This was quite a tender reminiscence of misspent youth yet I felt that it lacked substance really. I enjoy a retrospective novel but they can stray into repetitiveness as I fear this one did, the characters failed to resonate and there was nothing particularly gripping or riotous as many reviews had led me to believe. However, I didn’t think it was necessarily bad rather just poorly advertised. I would describe it, instead, as an insight to a niche area of familial relationships and queer upbringings in stereotypically homophobic settings. A meander of a novel rather than the rapid that I thought it would be, disappointing but it still had its moments.

juvation's review against another edition

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4.0

I bought this because it was a staff pick at City Lights (itself reason enough to buy something) and a quick dive into the writing at the shop left me tickled. Well, it's quite a ride! It's very short, but its accuracy makes it concise and incisive, as well as being hilarious and depressing and everything in between.

gabsalott13's review against another edition

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2.0

I don’t want to give a short ass book a long ass review, so here goes nothing! Like my meme review suggests, this book is not for the faint of heart! In Since I Laid My Burden Down, Brontez Purnell’s dark, evocative humor is equal parts familiar and foreign. I say familiar because his wry, graphic cadence reminds me of how certain elders get when they are just too old for filters. Purnell shares many precise glimpses into the particular childhood and young adulthood of his main character, DeShawn, which is marked by isolation within community. Though only about 33 years old in the present-day part of the novel, DeShawn is a character who admittedly “has some miles on him”, as the old folks would say, so perhaps it makes sense that he shares their candor.

Speaking of miles, this short book travels very far: it covers just how much happens in a small Alabama town, and just how much that town reverberates in the minds of its residents as they move on to the Great Northern Beyond. The narrative is super fast-paced, in a way that felt punchy in the beginning, but crossed the fine line over to disjointed by the end. Twenty pages before the conclusion, readers receive a hasty tour of DeShawn’s relationship with his father, and I felt myself getting a case of whiplash.

Speaking of whips, I didn’t find this novel to be vulgar, moreso very specific. Most of the sex scenes were a refreshing twist from the binary that exists in most of the books I read (where authors feel they must choose between quality and erotic fiction.) However, there is a significant TW in this book that I am not okay with the framing of. See down a few lines for more details…

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In spirit of radical honesty, Brontez Purnell doesn’t shy away from discussing how many instances of childhood sexual abuse are “hidden in plain sight” in some Southern, Black, and/or religious communities. The detail of most of these assaults are pretty high-level, but DeShawn engages in one relationship with a minor that is not at all handled with the care I would’ve liked to see. In the earlier chapters of this book, Purnell was very close to telling a necessary story about the cycle of abuse, and what writer Da’Shaun Harrison calls the carcerality of the closet. This is a particular manifestation of rape culture that many queer Black Southerners experience, and I don’t think I’ve seen it adequately depicted in fiction before. Purnell attempts to discuss how these cycles and carceral systems blur the lines of consent, agency, and disclosure long after the survivors of CSA enter adulthood. However, his flippant tone felt super wrong when applied to DeShawn and Andre’s relationship, which is perhaps the most troubling story in a book rife with troubling stories.

All in all, I don’t think this book will be a waste of your time--mostly because it’s too short to take up more than a few days. However, I can’t say I’d put it high on my recommendation list, and certainly not for those who are survivors/in general triggered by this sort of content.