Linguaggio ibrido, potente, ruvido. Mescolanza di dialettismi, lemmi arcaici e neologismi che rendono alta la scrittura.

 

“Prima” e “dopo”. Così è scandita la vita a Rocca Bardata, chimerico paese del Salento.

“Prima” e “dopo” si distinguono dai segni del tempo lasciati sui protagonisti, dalle ferite fresche o cicatrizzate ma mai guarite.

“Prima” e “dopo” confinati in un universo limaccioso, dove i sogni muoiono appena alzano il capo e i fiori appassiscono ancor prima di sbocciare.

Rocca Bardata, dove “prima” e “dopo” hanno concepito un seme malato e corrotto, dove “prima” era ieri, “dopo” è oggi, e dove domani è troppo lontano anche solo a pensarlo, è buona solo per la mala erba.

La genesi di tutto è racchiusa fra le zolle di una terra mefitica che nulla concede, che non offre salvezza, che costringe a ingoiare sangue e fango.

È la perfida terra di Dio, dove la redenzione è impensabile e la risurrezione impossibile.

Nella perfida terra di Dio, nonostante tutto, si leva un fiato di speranza. Refolo di vento che sorride impertinente e alimenta il fuoco, medicamento catartico per la terra e per gli uomini. Ha la voce di Michele, il più piccolo dei reietti.

 

“… se iddu non teneva a noi col cazzo che tornava qua a pigliarsi due pallottole”

 

 

 

 

P.S. Però, la sonata non prevede ouverture.

Sofistica, lo so.

Because I've read The Cranberry Hush, I thought I knew what to expect from Ben Monopoli's books. I was right and I was so, so wrong.

The fact that I've been reading it for about two months is purely my fault. If you want to be amazed and surprised and kept on your toes, go read this book!

I.HAVE.NO.WORDS.

This book is a small jewel.

I love it so much, soooooooooooooooo much!




The only thing I cannot understand is WHY it has not yet literally showered with LITERARY awards and nominations.

--> You are acquainted with Ben Monopoli’s works and like them? You MUST read it.

--> You read already one of the author’s books but did not particularly enjoy it. You HAVE to give this book a chance. You’ll change your opinion.

--> You’ve never read anything by Ben Monopoli? REALLY?! It is the right book to start with.

This book is extremely good written, highly emotional(be prepared!), melancholic, in a good way, wise and very creative. It's probably one of the best coming of age books I have ever read.
I think the chapters say everything:

1.(Age 13) Stag
2.(Age 15) Rainbow Subway
3.(Age 16-17) Dial Up
4. (Age 13)The Weight Lifter
5.(Age 18) So Long Eucalyptus
6.(Age 18) The First Time
7.(Age 20)The Six Months Between Then & Now
8.(Age 22)Honeymoon for Knights
9.(Age 24)Abbey’s Mohawk
10.(Age 25)Lumberjack Slams & Hurricane Swirls
11.(Age 26)The Key-Touching Guys
12.(Age 27-28)We All Go Back to Where We Belong

There are so many beautiful and emotional reviews for this book. You can read all of them.

Please read Wesley's review, he nailed it.

I can’t recommend highly enough!



Full review to come....maybe...if I'll manage to find the right words...

What makes us who we are? Is it life’s big milestones that propel us from childhood to adulthood? Or are we made of all the little memories that have a way of standing in for so much more?

A friend’s itchy chin might be how you remember him. A pair of worn corduroys might be what you remember of your first love. A green-eyed boy on a subway platform might be how you remember a breakthrough. A coffee cup in a blizzard might be how you remember your best friend. The sound of a dial-up modem connecting. The wet stems of lily pads in your dad’s hands. A spiral of hairs on a cheek. The outline of keys in a pocket. Blue paint under fingernails. Fireworks on a summer night. These details are like pulses, like heartbeat spikes on the cardiac line of memory.

In the twelve stories in The Youth & Young Loves of Oliver Wade, Ben Monopoli shows us these pulses in the life of our narrator Ollie as he grows from age thirteen to twenty-eight. Pulses that define who Ollie is, and ultimately who he’ll become.

A stand-alone companion to The Painting of Porcupine City and The Cranberry Hush.

Review:

Dear Ben Monopoli,

I enjoy your writing. I like that your stories are different from many m/m/gay romance books I have read before. I will admit that “The Painting of Porcupine City” went in the territory I never wanted to see, so I only skimmed it. I do not think that readers who have not read either of the two books mentioned in the blurb should worry, though – you won’t be confused, the connection to “Porcupine city” comes close to the end and it is not at all hard to understand without reading that book.

I have to admit that when I finished this story, I was so confused that I had to go and look at a couple of the most helpful Amazon reviews. A review by Ulysses (who gave the book a high grade) confirmed the source of my confusion: This book reads like a memoir – yes, it is a work of fiction, but the narrator describes his life from the age 13 till the age 28.

Before you ask, of course this is not the first fictional book disguised as a memoir that I have read; however usually the story has a theme apart from the narrator describing different events, and I just could not figure out what the theme was. I guess the theme was that he was figuring out where he belongs, because as I said the book stopped when he did figure it out, but maybe the execution did not work for me.

There was often a skip ahead of one or two years between chapters, and the book stops when he is 28 and has presumably found where he belongs. You know how sometimes when you read a book which is a collection of separate stories, sometimes it feels fragmentary? I did not feel like that when I was reading this one at all. Each story felt like a chapter, part of a novel, and I thought it was a good thing.

We meet Ollie at the age thirteen, when he and some of his friends are deciding to go “STAG” to the prom – supposedly because they want to go alone, but really because they could not get dates. We learn that Ollie is different because he knows he likes boys and he really does want to go alone, but a girl asks him and he ends up miserable. We see him couple years later going through all the misery of falling in love with his friend. We witness Ollie wanting to tell his parents that he is gay before he goes away for college and his parents surprising him in a good way. We see him making and losing friends in college, and his experiences after college. I just was not sure why all of those experiences were being described in such painstaking detail.

This book is not a romance, but it has a hopeful ending in the romantic department. We meet the guy with whom Ollie ends up very late in the book, so definitely do not expect the book to be the story of the building of the successful relationship. We are shown some of Ollie’s previous attempts at relationship in the course of the novel and they are beautifully written. Also, I want to stress that I have read a lot of coming of age gay fiction stories and many of those have worked very well for me, without being romances, so this book not being a romance is not a problem. The only thing which can make me dislike non-romantic books is a tragic ending at the end, and if the book is good I will never lower the grade for that personal reaction. And this book does not have a tragic ending.

I guess what this comes down to at the end is that most of the time while I was reading this story I was bored. I liked Ollie, but imagine me sitting down to describe the events in my life without making *the reason* why I am doing so clear for the reader. As I said – I suspect that the “finding the sense of belonging” was that reason, but it just was not enough for me in order to make it a satisfying novel. I feel a little bad, but I know that I will never reread this one so I cannot give it a higher grade.

Grade C.

This story is one among many, many contemporary first-person m-m novels. Vince is pining for Giff. Giff is Pining for the ‘true one’. Zane is pining for Vince. Vince is a whiny, self-indulgent obsessive lunatic. It’s all so predictable, if it was teenagers, but with adult characters it’s almost absurd. Just shut the fuck up you’all.

 

With flashbacks we learn, once Griff does a snowy, and at the end seemly undeveloped surprised visit to Griff—a trip no less from Boston to the Cape even though their relationship is, well nothing much and he’s never visited before and really he had to look Vince up—all about their silly trials and tribulations.

 

Vince spotted Giff across his first college class, and so marks the beginning of obsession and the needless invasion of privacy and boundaries. His love is startlingly in its haste, and his stalkerness quickly develops into something that borderlines on clinical.

We learn that Giff and Vince had only really fostered a year-long relationship, until Vince, all inappropriate with one instance of non-consensual sexual touch, finally figures out he really has crossed boundaries. The two part abruptly, and Griff can’t really figure out why and what contributed to the ending of a seemingly functioning and loving friendship. It was really only one year, and while Griff really did appear to have affection for Vince, weighed against Vince’s feelings it just seemed like a typical roommate situation. Griff’s relationship with Vince had elements of relationships with roommates I could relate to, but nothing beyond a strong friendship. To counter a lack of emotional content, the story should have expanded their cohabitation to two years, rather than one. Given the final, abrupt reason for severing the relationship, I as a reader NEEDED more, maybe a few mutual instances of sexual exploration, or some sort of deeper reciprocation of affection beyond the common friendship.

 

Intermingled in the present is Zane, who is an all-together loving, charming, and somewhat broken but in a very honest way. He is in love with Vince, and Vince, even though he can’t dispatch his feelings for Griff, adores Zane. However, because Vince has yet to get it through his head that Giff doesn’t love him, that he will never have Giff sexually, he continues to ignore his feelings for Zane and really shatters the poor fellows heart. Zane character, motivation, and drives were really the only successful part of this book.

 

Vince and Giff end up on some sort of self-discovery, but precarious, uneven writing and an unrealized plot plunder the novel’s intended meaning. It seems that the author was trying to examine the very nature of relationships, and in particular that silly trendy thing called a ‘bromance’. The idea of being at home with another individual and figuring out and defining this particular concept, and finally realizing it. Unfortunately this was only really laid bare at the very end, and without really understanding how obsessive Vince further integrated this new knowledge I was left with a feeling of emptiness. He spent so much time infatuated with this man that I expected, no required some exploration in the ways this affected him. An epilogue, like usual, even when five months after the ending of the book, was neither effective nor successful in answering important questions.

The novel was ultimately underwhelming and underdeveloped. It left me as a reader neither relating to the character’s personality or motivations.

 

The past and present were combined in a way that was confusing and troublesome. The writing style itself was simplistic, but this too was unfocused. Sentences seemed to meander. Thoughts weren’t clarified. It felt, coupled with the use of past and present, very cumbersome.