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A review by ergative
Chapel of Ease by Alex Bledsoe
3.5
In true Alex Bledsoe manner, the strength of this book lies in the depiction of the Tufa, with the uncanny combination of their human-facing squalid, impoverished existence in rural Appalachia, alongside their otherworldly magic and music. Each part is equally real, both the mundane and inhuman. And both components have their good and bad elements; it's nothing so simple as 'squalid human side = bad; magical fairy side = good'. The human hicks can be kind and decent and bigoted and cruel; and the magic of their songs and flights can be sinister and beautiful.
This book is a departure from previous Tufa tales, told entirely from the perspective of an outsider, one Matt Johansson, a New York stage actor. He is cast in a musical about Tufa history written by an ex-pat Tufa named Ray(ford) Parrish, which centers around the mystery of an ancient article buried by a long-dead Tufa in an old Chapel of Ease down in Tennessee. For a while it seems as if the primary conflict in the book might relate to the reluctance of the Tufa community to see their story told to outsiders, attracting attention of the outside world, but that actually fizzles out in a way I'm not entirely sure worked. Instead, the primary tension centers around the mystery what's buried in the chapel. In the play the mystery is never solved, which drives the cast of the play wild with frustration. Eventually, Matt finds himself travelling down to Needsville, Tennessee, the heart of Tufa-land, to seek out the original chapel that the play was based on, and dig up the mystery to find out for himself what it is.
A great deal of this driving tension derives from the fact that Ray is adamant that, for the purposes of his play, the actual revelation of the mystery is second to the story that is built around it. For this reason it's not necessary to reveal the solution to the audience. The emotional drama is all the more powerful if people remember the mystery; because once it's solved they won't care anymore. And it's entirely clear that Alex Bledsoe is playing a similar game with us, the readers of the book. This means, though, that Bledsoe has tied himself in a knot, because if he reveals the mystery to us, the reader, he's betrayed Ray Parrish's deeply held belief that the revelation is irrelevant; but if he doesn't reveal it, then we the readers share in the cast's frustration at being kept in the dark. And although Bledsoe is a very good writer, he is not a fairy-descended Tufa whose powers of music and dance are literally magical, rendering the emotional arc of the story so compelling that the solution becomes irrelevant. I think he managed to thread that needle in a way that made sense, but I was still left feeling a little dissatisfied in the end.
I should also mention that, although Bledsoe does the cultural representation of rural Appalachia with sensitivity and nuance, he really struggles with other bits of representation. I'm still fuming at how he treated the one black guy in 'Long Black Curl', and in this book he decides to take on gay people. Matt is gay. Down in Needsville, he starts a romance with a gay Tufa man. This is fine. The Tufa, apparently, are totally cool with gay people (except when the nasty ones call them 'faggots' an awful lot, but this is explained as being 'not personal', because they just use all the racial slurs as needed for outsiders; which, apparently, makes it less bad?).
No, the problem is more a sort of clumsiness in dealing with the situation. First, Matt is constantly turning lustful eyes on everyone and worrying about whether he'll be able to work effectively with them through his insta-crush. This is something I always find irritating, because fucking adults should be able to fucking control themselves and do their fucking jobs. But, to be fair, in previous books lustful men turn their gazes on women to similar effect, so it's a sort of equal opportunity male gaze thing, I guess. Alex Bledsoe's men have real difficulty keeping their brains out of their pants. But Matt has a boyfriend back in New York at the same time he's hooking up with his Tufa lover. This is excused by the arrival of a text message apparently intended for someone else, which implies his boyfriend is cheating on him back in New York. But because cell phone reception is so bad in Needsville, Matt can't get in touch with him to hash it out; which means that, in the event the text message was in fact innocent, he was fully cheating on his boyfriend.
Also, Matt knows martial arts, because his father told him when he came out that he would need to learn how to defend himself. And he's constantly using it against Tufas giving him a hard time. To be fair, they're not giving him a hard time for being gay (he does an awful lot of trespassing in his search for the Chapel of Ease), but it's the being gay bit that was responsible for him knowing how to kick some ass. And it just has the same sort of tokenistic feeling of forced competence that sets my teeth on edge when a girl!boss and strong!female!character has no flaws in an attempt to counteract the narrative that girls are weak. Like, I get the intention. I understand where it's coming from. But it still feels off. Matt is a lustful gay guy who can't keep his eyes to himself, cheats on his lovers with other men, but isn't your typical pansy-ass weako, because he knows Muay-Tai. It's well-intentioned, but it's clumsy.
At least he doesn't end up dead like the token black guy in the last book. That's progress, I guess.
This book is a departure from previous Tufa tales, told entirely from the perspective of an outsider, one Matt Johansson, a New York stage actor. He is cast in a musical about Tufa history written by an ex-pat Tufa named Ray(ford) Parrish, which centers around the mystery of an ancient article buried by a long-dead Tufa in an old Chapel of Ease down in Tennessee. For a while it seems as if the primary conflict in the book might relate to the reluctance of the Tufa community to see their story told to outsiders, attracting attention of the outside world, but that actually fizzles out in a way I'm not entirely sure worked. Instead, the primary tension centers around the mystery what's buried in the chapel. In the play the mystery is never solved, which drives the cast of the play wild with frustration. Eventually, Matt finds himself travelling down to Needsville, Tennessee, the heart of Tufa-land, to seek out the original chapel that the play was based on, and dig up the mystery to find out for himself what it is.
A great deal of this driving tension derives from the fact that Ray is adamant that, for the purposes of his play, the actual revelation of the mystery is second to the story that is built around it. For this reason it's not necessary to reveal the solution to the audience. The emotional drama is all the more powerful if people remember the mystery; because once it's solved they won't care anymore. And it's entirely clear that Alex Bledsoe is playing a similar game with us, the readers of the book. This means, though, that Bledsoe has tied himself in a knot, because if he reveals the mystery to us, the reader, he's betrayed Ray Parrish's deeply held belief that the revelation is irrelevant; but if he doesn't reveal it, then we the readers share in the cast's frustration at being kept in the dark. And although Bledsoe is a very good writer, he is not a fairy-descended Tufa whose powers of music and dance are literally magical, rendering the emotional arc of the story so compelling that the solution becomes irrelevant. I think he managed to thread that needle in a way that made sense, but I was still left feeling a little dissatisfied in the end.
I should also mention that, although Bledsoe does the cultural representation of rural Appalachia with sensitivity and nuance, he really struggles with other bits of representation. I'm still fuming at how he treated the one black guy in 'Long Black Curl', and in this book he decides to take on gay people. Matt is gay. Down in Needsville, he starts a romance with a gay Tufa man. This is fine. The Tufa, apparently, are totally cool with gay people (except when the nasty ones call them 'faggots' an awful lot, but this is explained as being 'not personal', because they just use all the racial slurs as needed for outsiders; which, apparently, makes it less bad?).
No, the problem is more a sort of clumsiness in dealing with the situation. First, Matt is constantly turning lustful eyes on everyone and worrying about whether he'll be able to work effectively with them through his insta-crush. This is something I always find irritating, because fucking adults should be able to fucking control themselves and do their fucking jobs. But, to be fair, in previous books lustful men turn their gazes on women to similar effect, so it's a sort of equal opportunity male gaze thing, I guess. Alex Bledsoe's men have real difficulty keeping their brains out of their pants. But Matt has a boyfriend back in New York at the same time he's hooking up with his Tufa lover. This is excused by the arrival of a text message apparently intended for someone else, which implies his boyfriend is cheating on him back in New York. But because cell phone reception is so bad in Needsville, Matt can't get in touch with him to hash it out; which means that, in the event the text message was in fact innocent, he was fully cheating on his boyfriend.
Also, Matt knows martial arts, because his father told him when he came out that he would need to learn how to defend himself. And he's constantly using it against Tufas giving him a hard time. To be fair, they're not giving him a hard time for being gay (he does an awful lot of trespassing in his search for the Chapel of Ease), but it's the being gay bit that was responsible for him knowing how to kick some ass. And it just has the same sort of tokenistic feeling of forced competence that sets my teeth on edge when a girl!boss and strong!female!character has no flaws in an attempt to counteract the narrative that girls are weak. Like, I get the intention. I understand where it's coming from. But it still feels off. Matt is a lustful gay guy who can't keep his eyes to himself, cheats on his lovers with other men, but isn't your typical pansy-ass weako, because he knows Muay-Tai. It's well-intentioned, but it's clumsy.
At least he doesn't end up dead like the token black guy in the last book. That's progress, I guess.