Reviews

"I feel in myself now a faint, a dreadful stirring of what so overwhelmingly stirred in me then, great thirsty heat, and trembling, and tenderness so painful I thought my heart would burst."

Despite being only 150 pages long, it did take me a while to read Giovanni's Room. It's definitely a lot to digest, it's very literary and emotionally intense, but those are also exactly the reasons I love this book so much.

With his powerful prose, it feels as though James Baldwin is reaching across time, right into the depths of my Queer soul. Honestly, sometimes it even hurt to read this (in a good way).

Giovanni's Room is a story of self-destruction, identity, shame, repression, alienation, gender and sexuality. It's a tale that examines the destructive forces of toxic masculinity, and internalised homophobia and misogyny. To quote Baldwin himself:

"It's about what happens to you if you're afraid to love anybody."

It's tragic, explosive, emotional, frustrating and deeply meditative. David is a very flawed person, but still I related deeply to so many of his experiences with his sexuality. And at his worst and most toxic, David also reminded me of all the shitty queer men I've had terrible experiences with. Baldwin somehow puts into words so many tumultuous feelings I myself have experienced before. It's genuinely astonishing.

"But if I were still able to feel affection and if he had seen it in my eyes, it would not have helped, for affection, for the boys I was doomed to look at, was vastly more frightening than lust."

Baldwin is a master at writing. The way he plays with tense/chronology/structure is especially ingenious. While very literary, his writing isn't impenetrable, and is still filled to the brim with complex themes, intensity, symbolism and poeticism. Every sentence is so perfectly crafted, and there are so many quotes that just took my breath away.

I honestly can't do this book justice with words. Just read it. It's life changing.

As I finished this book in a graveyard, bathed in the gleam of the Spring sunlight, the striking potency of the climax involuntarily caused me to frantically hold the book closer to my face. And when it was over, with that haunting denouement, I closed the book and sat there for a while in silence.