David, a young American in 1950s Paris, is waiting for his fiancée to return from vacation in Spain. But when he meets Giovanni, a handsome Italian barman, the two men are drawn into an intense affair. After three months David's fiancée returns and, denying his true nature, he rejects Giovanni for a 'safe' future as a married man. His decision eventually brings tragedy.
Filled with passion, regret and longing, this story of a fated love triangle has become a landmark of gay writing. James Baldwin caused outrage as a black author writing about white homosexuals, yet for him the issues of race, sexuality and personal freedom were eternally intertwined.
Housekeeping note before we begin: I decided to only do an overall rating for this book, since my ratings breakdown didn't really seem to fit. Maybe because it's a classic and not a contemporary...I don't know. Whatever the case, here we are. Just the one rating.
This book is fuckin SAD, y'all. (I mean...duh. But I still had to say it.) David is a gay man who has grown up hating himself and everyone like him. There are also interactions with others, not clear if they are drag queens, trans women, or identify in some other way, but they are gender nonconforming, and his reaction to them is pretty fuckin gross. Baldwin's writing of David captures the internalized loathing that queer people were and often still are raised with, the consequent prejudice they project onto other queer people as a result...it's heartbreaking.
The story switches back and forth between the present and memories from the past, and both present David and flashback David are filled with the same discomfort and self-loathing, which makes it all the worse...that nothing changes for him. He's chasing something, although he doesn't seem all that sure what it is, and he'll never be able to find it because he's so filled with that hatred that he can't see anything beyond it. See what I mean? SAD!
Now, full disclosure, I haven't quite finished the book yet, so I'll have to post an update if something suddenly shifts and David has some kind of metamorphosis or finds self-acceptance. I couldn't stop thinking about it, though, so I wanted to post while I had all this filling up my mind.
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