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gapingvoid's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
4.0
So many aspects of the author's life resonated with me. Growing up queer in a rather rural area, trying to escape from my sexuality and all the things I felt guilty about by means of religion, the way Seán Hewitt uses words...
Except from South America I was familar with pretty much every place he described. Liverpool (the old graveyard that feels like travelling through time, enhanced by his ruminations about the life of the poet and pastor (?) Hopkins), Gothenburg (though I haven't been there, Halmstad, another Swedish town, isn't far and probably has a similar atmosphere. Imagining Elias and Seán going through a dark winter there felt desolate and so hopeless) and Lourdes (a place often visited in pilgrimages because of apparent apparitions of the Madonna - I've been to exactly the places, i.e. the bath and the spring, he described and felt pulled back in time to when I went there with my family, still completely oblivious to my own queerness, despite there being signs.. it felt like I wasn't the only one growing up extremely catholic - even though the author's upbringing was only vaguely christian - and that there are in fact others like me).
Overall, the book is rather sombre and depicts very traumatising and mesmerisingly sad topics. It felt very patchworky (which I liked), though some topics ended rather abruptly, which made me think that maybe the author himself has not yet processed or digested e.g. his relationship with Elias (they broke up and afterwards there wasn't a lot of how he felt about it except he tried to cope by hooking up with strangers). His friends also felt painfully absent. While I understand that it probably felt like he was alone during his time with Elias (which is later further explained by Elias telling him to keep his mental health a secret from his friends) they didn't play much of a role before or afterwards either.
Nevertheless, an inspiring, if rather depressing book, which made me feel seen in many ways.
Except from South America I was familar with pretty much every place he described. Liverpool (the old graveyard that feels like travelling through time, enhanced by his ruminations about the life of the poet and pastor (?) Hopkins), Gothenburg (though I haven't been there, Halmstad, another Swedish town, isn't far and probably has a similar atmosphere. Imagining Elias and Seán going through a dark winter there felt desolate and so hopeless) and Lourdes (a place often visited in pilgrimages because of apparent apparitions of the Madonna - I've been to exactly the places, i.e. the bath and the spring, he described and felt pulled back in time to when I went there with my family, still completely oblivious to my own queerness, despite there being signs.. it felt like I wasn't the only one growing up extremely catholic - even though the author's upbringing was only vaguely christian - and that there are in fact others like me).
Overall, the book is rather sombre and depicts very traumatising and mesmerisingly sad topics. It felt very patchworky (which I liked), though some topics ended rather abruptly, which made me think that maybe the author himself has not yet processed or digested e.g. his relationship with Elias (they broke up and afterwards there wasn't a lot of how he felt about it except he tried to cope by hooking up with strangers). His friends also felt painfully absent. While I understand that it probably felt like he was alone during his time with Elias (which is later further explained by Elias telling him to keep his mental health a secret from his friends) they didn't play much of a role before or afterwards either.
Nevertheless, an inspiring, if rather depressing book, which made me feel seen in many ways.
i_webb's review against another edition
Pacing was slow so I had a hard time wanting to listen before it got returned to Libby
kvelpr's review against another edition
dark
emotional
sad
slow-paced
4.25
The writing is excellent; I think the writing would have been higher if I had found the book at a different time in my life…
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide attempt and Suicidal thoughts
mykoyamo's review against another edition
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
this book is beautiful. period. i loved the modern poetic prose. reading the account of a young gay man reeling from his relationship with his chronically depressed ex-boyfriend fundamentally changed my life. this is a modern classic.
bluelilyblue's review against another edition
I might have been slightly unprepared for how heavy a read this would be, and just how often I'd have to put it down and distract myself with something else. Nevertheless, I appreciated it for its alertness to the invisible threads connecting things and people and places, and obviously for its self-aware literariness--the bits and pieces of Hopkins are quite skillfully woven through the narrative, and I couldn't not relate to the compulsion to turn to poetry when striving to make sense of difficult experiences. I think there is a fine balance here between a viewpoint where the world is suffused with metaphor and lush language, and one where there is pure, untranslatable feeling, and words are something one desperately grasps at for a little clarity.