Book Review	Book Reviews Archive

The Queerest Places
Paula Martinac
Henry Holt & Company
How to order The Long Falling
Keith Ridgway
Houghton Mifflin
How to order Revision of Justice
John Morgan Wilson
Simon and Schuster
How to order

Sin and salvation are the themes of Keith Ridgway's wonderful first novel, The Long Falling, (Houghton Mifflin, cloth, 208 pages, $22), but as in life, defining these terms is neither simple nor clear.

Grace Quinn is a mistreated wife whose husband's drinking has led to a car accident and the death of a young women. As a result, the couple is shunned in their small, rural, Irish village. After her spouse's death in-- probably a retaliatory hit-and-run-- Grace moves to Dublin to be with Martin, her gay son who left home, and his harsh father, years before. In this new setting, as Grace and Martin begin to form a new relationship, secrets from the past threaten to destroy their lives.

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The Long Falling deals with the intricate, often unnerving, relationships that exist between gay people and their parents. Martin and Grace's life is clouded by the emotional legacy of Martin's father and Grace's husband. Even in Dublin's gay world, Martin feels the judgements and disapproval of his father. When Grace joins him there, the father-- and his untimely and suspicious death-- is even more present. Within this context, Grace and Michael's relationship changes and grows. Grace is more willing to accept Michael's sexuality and his friends-- she even takes to going to gay pubs with him-- but her ambivalences about men and sexuality cultivated throughout her harsh marriage color her view of her son.

Ridgway never overtly psychologizes, but simply spins his characters' relationships out. What makes The Long Falling so powerful is that his ability to delve into the troubled heat of the parent and gay-child relationship also exposes the structure of how the family itself often hurts all those involved in it.

Ridgway knows how to tell a story-- and The Long Falling has a taut, surprising, and deeply satisfying plot. But the strength of the novel is in its insightful and compelling emotional details. Ridgway has an eye and an ear for human quirks and foibles that sustain, rather than diminish, the humanity of his characters. Succinct, poetic, and emotionally shattering, The Long Falling is not simply a fine debut, but the beginning of an illustrious career.

La la land

John Morgan Wilson's Simple Justice won the coveted 1996 Edgar Allen Poe for "Best First Novel." A brooding, noir-influenced tale set in LA's murky underside, Simple Justice featured Benjamin Justice, a gay reporter gone to drink and despair, who is forced by his ex-boss into a sleuthing/reporting assignment, against his better judgement. The power of Simple Justice resided in Wilson's ability-- beneath the complicated, deftly plotted narrative-- to also raise and discuss moral and ethical questions regarding the actions of his characters. Simple Justice was more than a newspaper or detective thriller, but managed to touch our hearts and minds.

Now Benjamin Justice is back (and feeling somewhat better) in Revision of Justice, (Simon and Schuster, cloth, 310 pages, $23.95), where he once again discovers that the low-life of LA often socializes and murders in the brightest high life the city has to offer. Murder, corrupt police, and rotten-to-the-core Hollywood industry types converge to make Justice's life a lot more difficult.

Once again Wilson knows how to plot and move a story, and there are enough twists and turns here to keep several Dashill Hammetts going at top speed. The lure and enjoyment of Justice Revisited dwells, to a large degree, in Wilson's incredible ear for crackling dialogue and an uncanny ability to locate the convincing shabby detail; this is James M. Cain territory and Wilson makes us enjoy every minute of it.

But Wilson's triumph is his ability to portray with integrity and intelligence the pain that every human-- journalist, victim, cop, murderer-- experiences as they live their lives.

Travel guide with a past

It has long been a slogan of gay liberation that "We Are Everywhere." But exactly where is everywhere? Paula Martinac gives names, places, street addresses, and even apartment numbers in The Queerest Places: A Guide to Gay and Lesbian Historic Sites (Henry Holt & Company, paper, 350 pages, $14.95). Covering every US state and most major cities, Martinac lists the homes of the queer and famous, notable historic sites, cemeteries in which notable deviants are interred, and even contemporary resources such as gay community centers and gay and lesbian research libraries. While other "travel guides" contain mostly information on bars, clubs, and even support groups, The Queerest Places focuses on gay and lesbian history and culture, thus reminding us of our past even as we discover the present.

Martinac has a chatty style-- she is also an award-winning novelist-- an eye for the amusing detail, and a wealth of historical knowledge. So if you have a hankering to see where dream-boat Rock Hudson was born, where African- American arts patron A'Lelia Walker gave her famous parties, or the rooming house where W. H. Auden, Gypsy Rose Lee, and Carson McCullers all lived together-- this is the address book you need.

Author Profile:  Michael Bronski
	Michael Bronski is the author of Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility and The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom. He writes frequently on sex, books, movies, and culture, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
	Email:	mabronski@aol.com