G. Roger Denson

This was a surprise of a novel for me. I never expected it to be so literate, so weighted in social import. The author, G. Roger Denson, was unknown to me in 2010. Now I see he is a popular and well-respected commentator for the Huffington Post, whose reviews on art and popular culture reflect political developments in the world. It makes sense, because every word in this novel seems to be weighed for its political value.

The story, about the friendship between a gay opera critic and a straight tenor destined for stardom, is mirky and complicated from the beginning. Although the characters seem high minded, they each have baser ambitions that destroy the friendship and culminate in tragedy. Prejudice against homosexuality plays a big part in the split, but to the author's credit, that is not the only deciding factor. The gay man's desire can be oppressive as much as it can be admired. The straight man's ambition makes him seem at times a sociopath. It is their flaws that propel the story forward, and through the lives of the many secondary characters who are as much the narrators as they are the narrated.

The novel has a very pronounced structure. Each section is written as a document. The book begins as a journal, but then becomes a series of newspaper articles, an opera libretto, a short story, and a series of illicit recordings. It is almost as though we have come into possession of a collection of files. The effect is a realism that makes the reader feel he or she is following a real news story, but with far deeper revelations. To reveal more about the structure would spoil the story, for even the structure is part of the story, and in this it has a relationship to modern literature of the last century.… (altro)