Book Review
Dec. 25th, 2011 10:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kenjariBeatitude
by Larry Closs
I received a copy of this book through a Goodreads First Reads giveaway.
I found this book a little uneven, but overall I quite liked it. It concerns Harry, a magazine editor in NYC, just coming off a disastrous relationship, who strikes up a very intense friendship with Jay, a new hire in the magazine's art department. Their shared love of the Beat writers brings them together and cements their friendship, and Harry falls in love with Jay. However, Jay, while feeling a strong bond of close friendship with Harry, cannot reciprocate Harry's romantic love. Harry thus has to struggle with how to handle his feelings and still maintain a close friendship with Jay.
Let me get my small quibbles out of the way first. Closs writes with an almost naive enthusiasm that occasionally did not work for me; there were many places where it worked beautifully, though. There were also a couple of points where I found the pacing to be a little off, where Harry's ruminations on his feelings for and relationship with Jay caused too much of a pause, like a fermata held just a little too long.
However, there was a lot I liked about Beatitude. One refreshing things was that a good portion of the action took place at Harry and Jay's workplace. I have rarely encountered novels in which the protagonists have fairly ordinary jobs and those jobs are a major part of the setting and action. Closs does this really well and it adds a welcome sense of realism and immediacy to the narrative. I also really liked the way Jay and Harry's relationship was built on shared interests and compatibility of personality. It was one of the many things that made the narrative feel so natural and real. I also really liked Jay's girlfriend, Zahra - she was interesting in her own right and I liked the way Closs handled her relationship with Harry and the way she reacted to his relationship with Jay - it was nuanced and avoided the easy tropes. The way the Beat writers, their lives, and their work were threaded through the novel was nice, too.
by Larry Closs
I received a copy of this book through a Goodreads First Reads giveaway.
I found this book a little uneven, but overall I quite liked it. It concerns Harry, a magazine editor in NYC, just coming off a disastrous relationship, who strikes up a very intense friendship with Jay, a new hire in the magazine's art department. Their shared love of the Beat writers brings them together and cements their friendship, and Harry falls in love with Jay. However, Jay, while feeling a strong bond of close friendship with Harry, cannot reciprocate Harry's romantic love. Harry thus has to struggle with how to handle his feelings and still maintain a close friendship with Jay.
Let me get my small quibbles out of the way first. Closs writes with an almost naive enthusiasm that occasionally did not work for me; there were many places where it worked beautifully, though. There were also a couple of points where I found the pacing to be a little off, where Harry's ruminations on his feelings for and relationship with Jay caused too much of a pause, like a fermata held just a little too long.
However, there was a lot I liked about Beatitude. One refreshing things was that a good portion of the action took place at Harry and Jay's workplace. I have rarely encountered novels in which the protagonists have fairly ordinary jobs and those jobs are a major part of the setting and action. Closs does this really well and it adds a welcome sense of realism and immediacy to the narrative. I also really liked the way Jay and Harry's relationship was built on shared interests and compatibility of personality. It was one of the many things that made the narrative feel so natural and real. I also really liked Jay's girlfriend, Zahra - she was interesting in her own right and I liked the way Closs handled her relationship with Harry and the way she reacted to his relationship with Jay - it was nuanced and avoided the easy tropes. The way the Beat writers, their lives, and their work were threaded through the novel was nice, too.
