Monday, May 31, 2021

Flowers, COVID, and Angel Lovers

It's the last day of May.  It occurs to me that we're just past the mid-point of this eighth of the year, and we're closer to the Summer Solstice than the May-Day past.  The poppies, yellow irises, and foxgloves are blooming.  I can hear the hummingbirds zipping around somewhere.





It's slowly dawning on me that, as of three days ago,  I'm now fully vaccinated against COVID-19.  It feels so weird.  On one hand, the CDC says I can do a whole lot without a mask, like go to the dog park.  On the other hand, it feels like going through an airlock without a space suit without one.  Stores and work are still requiring them, so it's not like I wont be completely maskless anytime soon.







I've just finished reading, "Into This River I Drown," by TJ Klune.  Although I knew it was queer-friendly didn't realize it was a Lambda Literary Winner for Best Gay Romance.  It reminded me of Susan Trott's "Sightings," only with a kind of Iron John emphasis on fathers, and hunky gay angel sex scenes sprinkled throughout.  

It started out like a memoir, turned into a mystery/crime story, and by the end turned into a meditation on fathers, faith, love, and sacrifice.   The whole idea that love = sacrifice challenged me because it felt Old-Testament-Abraham-and-Issac, but it was consistent within the framework of the book's "my boyfriend/lover is the town's guardian angel" premiss.  (I would have preferred love = a gift, and sacrifice = a choice to not do something in order to do something else, but that's my preference.) 

The writing was excellent, although I did notice some of the romance tropes driving the main character, Benji's, decision making process -- he'd get mad at the drop of a hat and then fight with Cal, his angel lover, for what seemed like plot-driven reasons.   Also, there were romance genre moments of "I'm just a small-town, 21 year old mechanic; why would a 200 year old red-haired, hirsute, muscular, well-endowed, angel (with perpetual stubble) ever want me?"  On one hand, not having them would have given the book a wish-fulfillment-porn feel; but on the other hand, it felt like Benji picked up the romance-genre equivalent of the idiot-ball at various times.


The memoir feel gave Benji, the narrator, a way to go back and forth between the past and the present, effectively giving him a limited-omniscient POV.  It also enabled Klune to weave themes and phrases into the narrative that had quick pay-offs for the reader without having to start the story with Benji's parents' childhoods.  

I should read sections of it again and look more closely at the mechanics of the story.