The sucky thing about tradition is that the same thing happens
over and over and over. Take the traditional Christmas story,
for example. Dickens created the mold with A Christmas
Carol: The spirit of the season miraculously transforms
a miserable holiday hater into an ecstatic and generous Christmas
advocate. But this brilliant story has been regurgitated countless
times in various shades of holiday vomit in books like Richard
Paul Evans' annual pools of puke, The Christmas Box, The
Locket, The Timepiece, etc.
But the Christmas story doesn't have to bring on waves
of nausea. It can stray from the moldy old mold and still
convey the sense of hope and kindness that we're required
to feel throughout the month of December.
|
|
Comfort
& Joy
by Jim Grimsley
(Algonquin Books, 291 pages, $21.95) |
Award-winning author Jim Grimsley expands his southern-fried
gay fiction territory with Comfort & Joy, a beautifully
written novel set during the holiday season. The story follows
the tender relationship of Ford McKinney and Dan Crell, who
are traveling to Dan's mother's house for Christmas. Ford
is a handsome pediatric resident from a wealthy and prominent
Savannah family. His parents can't understand why he isn't
married. Ford denied his homosexuality until he met Dan, a
hospital administrator, and the two fell into a tentative
relationship that is both damaged and strengthened by the
couple's families. Now they have reached the point where they
will either split or commit.
Though Grimsley uses Christmas to set the tone for potential
family bloodletting, he doesn't lapse into the fake, sugary
sentimentality that usually defines yuletide tales. Ford
and Dan's homosexuality fades into the background as their
travails become as rapturous and painful as any love story
ever told. Christmas becomes their emotional baseline as
Grimsley compares the festivities in uptight Savannah with
the more accepting party at Dan's folks' double-wide. Anyone
who plans to come out to their parents at Christmas dinner
must read this novel first to witness a worst-case scenario.
Comfort & Joy is steeped in realism, but reading
A Midnight Clear is like drinking a strong cup of hallucinogenic
mushroom tea. Katherine Stone's romance novel stars Jace
Colton and Julia Anne Hayley in a preposterous saga of damaged
souls becoming healed by the season. Jace, a doctor originally
from Savannah, meets Julia on an airplane bound for London.
Julia wants to overcome past tragedies; Jace is heading
off to the Balkan war. Naturally, the two fall in love.
|
|
A
Midnight Clear
by Katherine Stone
(Warner
Books, 328 pages, $6.99) |
Like a soap opera, everything that happens in A Midnight
Clear is glossy and surreal. The author mines the emotional
motherlode of Christmas with such topics as dead children,
young widows and house fires. But even horrible events seem
dreamy and romantic in this book; the characters' pain is
a pleasure to witness. Stone's breathless narrative is like
a narcotic. The story is sometimes difficult to follow and
everything seems to take a really long time to happen. At
one point, Julia paints pictures of a fuchsia Christmas tree
and multicolored reindeer--the hues that her dead, disfigured,
sight-challenged half-sister used to see--and sells them to
Hallmark. But at Christmastime, hallucinations can provide
welcome relief. This novel will take you much farther away
than a Calgon bubble bath.
|
|
The
Raven and the Nightingale:
A Modern Mystery of Edgar Allan Poe
by
Joanne Dobson
(Doubleday,
275 pages, $29.95)
|
Then again, too many sugarplums dancing in your head can cause
permanent brain damage. The Raven and the Nightingale
offers a much more literate and challenging tale. This is
Joanne Dobson's third book featuring amateur sleuth Karen
Pelletier, a wisecracking English professor at tony Enfield
College. Karen comes from a blue-collar background, breaking
away from single-mom waitresshood into the lofty land of academia.
But even as she climbs high in the ivory tower, she always
remains appealingly down to earth.
The Raven and the Nightingale begins with a stabbing
on Thanksgiving and rolls right through December. One of
Karen's colleagues turns up dead, and she assists a cute
police detective with his investigation. The story squeezes
every drop of ice out of winter's cold heart by including
a sub-mystery about Edgar Allan Poe, his legendary girlfriend
Emmeline, and his transvestism. Though the story ends right
before Christmas, the holiday merely provides texture and
depth to this winter tale. In one scene, Karen's daughter
tries to reunite the family for the happy holiday; in another,
Karen takes a half-hearted trip to the mall. This charming
and witty mystery isn't substantial enough to keep you up
all night, but it will provide an intelligent diversion
from the craziness of the season. If the holidays are murder,
then this is the untraditional Xmas tale for you.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Willamette Week | originally
published December 15,
1999
|
