Ladymol's Review

I feel utterly inadequate to describe this book. Perhaps I shouldn’t try. I can tell you the affect it had on me though. I want to take myself to an elemental place—a place of clear water and ancient rocks—and listen to the earth. I want to listen to the stories people have to tell. I want to change my life.

This story is a story about names—the names people give themselves, the names they give others. It’s about the importance of these names. For what are we if not defined by words? What is gay? What is good? What is evil?

The boy in this story asks these questions. His quest to understand himself and his names will leave you reeling. I don’t think I’ve ever tried to absorb a book into my mind before—wanted to be part of the telling and the discovering, wanted to find my name, my story.

This book isn’t an easy read; it’s almost stream of consciousness in places and doesn’t follow a linear plot (to great effect). It’s sometimes deceptively simple but the most incredibly painful events are told in this simplistic way, and it’s very much for the reader to feel the pain behind the words.

It’s a wonderful gay love story, with some of the best-written sex I’ve found in a novel: not especially graphic, but very, very powerful.

If you’re an adventurous reader and don’t want a story handed to you on a plate, then I highly recommend you give this one a go.

Cerisaye's Review

This is one of those books it pays to read more than once, not because it’s difficult (though it is complex) but there’s just so much in its 355 pages it’s almost impossible to take in first time.  I read the novel a couple of years ago and was so overwhelmed I couldn’t organise my thoughts/impressions into a coherent review.  I’ve just read it again and to tell the truth I don’t feel any more confident about my ability to convey how amazing it is so you’ll rush out and buy a copy- but really you must!  I’m only trying because everyone who would appreciate this novel should hear about it.  If it wasn’t such a celebration of gay sex & love I bet it would’ve been snapped up to become a major Hollywood movie- Johnny Depp when he was younger would’ve been perfect in the lead role.

Anyway, I can’t even begin to summarise the plot other than to say it’s an epic tale of the Old West at the turn of the last century narrated by a boy called Shed or Duivichi-un-Dua (a story in itself), part Native American on his (dead) mother’s side.  Shed likes sex, it’s part of the human being story (there are Little Big Man parallels).  He’s not bothered whether he does it with a man or woman but prefers boys- eventually he discovers the Native American tradition of the Berdache or two-spirit, a holy man revered among tribes who is not afraid to inhabit opposite gender roles and practice same-sex love.  Shed finds strength in what he calls killdeer, a game he plays to survive.

Shed lives in Excellent, Idaho where he works Out in the Shed as a male prostitute servicing selected clients interested in boys.  Shed’s employer Ida Richilieu is a larger-than-life character but realistic in her time/place.  Ida sort of adopts Shed when his mother dies.  She’s loving and caring, frank in ALL things including sex.  Ida is a lot more than the stereotypical tart with a heart.   She puts Shed to work when he’s old enough by her reckoning and he’s happy to oblige.

There are so many threads of plot, recurring themes, and the structure of the narrative gradually reveals until what we read at the beginning all makes sense, so it’s difficult to convey the book’s scope- wide.  It has lots of gay elements.  Words are very important, stories (and the people who make them).  There’s beautiful romance between Shed and green-eyed, black-haired cowboy Dellwood Barker, the crazy moon man who helps Shed make sense of the world and his place in it.  Together with beautiful whore Alma Hatch who is obsessed with birds (each character’s eccentricities weave into the plot), Ida, Shed and Dellwood make a family and a perfect way of life, earthy & wild, fuelled by liquor, drugs and LOTS of sex.

A crazy story about crazy people told by a crazy.  Shed looks for the story HE needs to know, scrutinising people and the world.  It’s only when Shed loses everyone close to him he learns the truth: things aren’t the way he thought, that what he was doing wasn’t what he thought it was either, nor who he thought he was.  Confused?  It all makes sense in the end.

Funny and tragic, totally engrossing, beautifully rich and cleverly written.  It’ll make you think hard about the truth behind the stories we hear (we all have them as individuals and family members).  It reflects a particular time and place, when men AND women had freedom of expression, though this was coming to an end, as represented by the Mormons, righteous zealots determined to stamp out lawlessness and the sexual free-for-all enjoyed by Shed’s happy family. 

Bad things happen and there are disturbing scenes:  Shed is raped as a boy and there is violent retribution at the climax that is very hard to take.  But that’s how life was then, cruel and harsh.  This is a story about love and acceptance, tolerance and understanding.  We’re all human beings regardless of our differences, and the story embraces diversity with passion as well as sensitivity and breathtaking imagination.  Those that say explicit sex has no place in a literary novel should read the scene between Shed and Dellwood in their otherworldly hideaway.  One of the most erotic things I’ve ever read.

Characters you will never forget, sex, intergenerational and mixed race relationships, incest, spirituality...all these and much more.  As Ida would say:  Ah, the humanity.  A stunning and haunting novel with incredible depth and vision as well as real compassion for its characters.  That just maybe might change the way you look at yourself and the world as you travel with Shed on his epic spiritual quest for self-knowledge and love.  Definitely one of the best books I’ve read.  One of those rare novels I’ll return to again, and again, finding something new every time.