10 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE February 9, 2001
eveningsout
Rice's first book is a marvelously convoluted tale
A Density of Souls
by Christopher Rice
Hyperion, $23.95 hardcover Reviewed by Anthony Glassman
There is a line in a poem: "Things fall apart, the center cannot hold." It describes the fundamental nature of things to devolve into chaos from order; the tidiest of lives gets messy as time goes on.
It also sums up the basis for A Density of Souls, the debut novel by Christopher Rice.
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Rice is the son of gothic queen Anne Rice, whose Interview with the Vampire was made into a film starring Brad Pitt and a bleach-blond Tom Cruise. Anne Rice's novels have sold millions of copies, and are must-reads for angst-ridden teens everywhere.
Enter her offspring, her only child. Openly gay, growing up with Anne for a mother and poet Stan Rice for a father, eccentricities, and they probably all came Christopher can be expected to have some
out in this book.
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Set like much of his mother's work in New Orleans, the book starts off sweetly, innocently. Four friends are riding their bikes, and decide to stop in one of New Orleans' many cemeteries. A sudden rainstorm starts, and terror overtakes them until Stephen recites a poem written by his dead father, a victim of suicide. The poem calms them, and begins a narrative thread introducing the strange power the slight Stephen seems to have over Meredith, Brandon and Greg, the other three children.
Fast forward to the first day of high school: Stephen steps through the doors of the illustrious Cannon School. As is the case with so
many young people, he is immediately an outsider.
Even his old friends won't talk to him. Greg and Brandon are now openly hostile. Stephen, of course, is a gay boy in a straight world.
Okay, at this point, let me drop all semblance of doing a regular review of this novel. It's a marvelously convoluted book. It is complex, intricate and violent, full of anger, malice, hatred and love.
Meredith, for all intents and purposes, prostitutes herself to Greg, she a cheerleader and he, like his friend Brandon, a football player. If she doesn't like his violence, if shé doesn't like his fearful hatred of Stephen, she writes it down in her journal and writes it off as the cost of cementing her relationship with her two friends, who she fears will be taken away by Stephen.
The boys themselves fear Stephen be-
cause of the love they have for him. He is powerful, he is beautiful, he is fragile-seeming. They are big, tough, and far frailer than the object of their
scorn.
As could be surmised, various tragedies ensue. It
A DENSITY
OF
OULS
RICE
is difficult to outline the plot without revealing too much.
Christopher Rice wrote a good book. It's probably best described as psychological horror, and fits well with the recent wave of horror writers like Kathe Koja, for whom the true terror lies in the mundane, the everyday.
The story moves in waves; each ebb of the novel could have served as an ending, but instead swells into the beginning of the next chapter.
There is a hint, a soupçon, of the supernatural, but whether it is the power of suggestion or the power of Stephen is never certain.
What is certain is that Rice, now at work on his second novel, carries on in the vein of both his mother, for whom New Orleans is the object of affection and the heart of evil, and of Clive Barker, the gay man as outsider seeing the evil inherent in the most innocent-seeming of places.
Top ten GLBT books
Insight Out Books, the nation's first LGBT-specific book club, has begun compiling a top-ten list. The list is based on sales through their web site, mail solicitation, and their 800 number.
The club will compile the list each month. 1. The World of Normal Boys by K.M. Soehnlein
K.M. Soehnlein's debut novel The World of Normal Boys tells of Robin MacKenzie, a boy old enough to recognize that he is different from the boisterous, rowdy kids interested in activities that "normal" boys seem to pursue, but too young to know how to proceed with his life.
2. A Density of Souls by Christopher Rice
See review above.
3. The Night Listener by Armistead Maupin
Gabriel Noone, a gay NPR host, finds personal and professional salvation in the manuscript of a wrenching memoir by Pete, a 13-year-old boy with AIDS, the result of sexual abuse by his parents and others. But as Pete's health deteriorates and Noone's offers to meet him are rebuffed, the seeds of doubt are sown. Is Pete's story true? Does he exist at all?
4. The Power Book by Jeanette Winterson
An e-mail writer named Ali will compose any story you like, on order, provided you are willing to enter the tale as yourself and risk leaving it transformed into someone else. Moving through time, hurtling through cyberspace, The PowerBook uses fairy tales, contemporary myths, and pop culture to weave a story of lost love.
5. Completely Queer: The Gay and Lesbian Encyclopedia edited by Steve Hogan and Lee Hudson
A gay and lesbian encyclopedia with more than 500 entries and 200 photos cetebrating gay and lesbian life, personalities,
culture.
.
6. The Adonis Complex by Harrison Pope
Many men gay and straight-are taking "body beautiful" to unhealthy extremes. The weight stacks clank. The blenders whirr with protein drinks. But the noise can't dull the relentless voice in some men's heads: "You don't look good enough."
7. Uncle Mame by Eric Myers
"The first American writer to popularize high camp" was christened Edward Everett Tanner III, but to the world he was better known as Patrick Dennis, creator of Auntie Mame, the beloved whirling dervish of books, stage, and screen.
8. The Coming Storm by Paul Russell
"Imagine if the emotional chaos of Ang Lee's haunting film The Ice Storm collided with the repressed ambiance of Peter Weir's sumptuous Dead Poets' Society and blended with a contemporary, gay Lolita. You would get Paul Russell's daring tale The Coming Storm."
-Kaizaad Kotwal, Gay People's Chronicle
9. The XY Survival Guide by Benjie Nycum
"The book is a must for any young gay man, and is being released at an especially low $9.95, to make it more accessible to cash-strapped teens."
-Anthony Glassman, Gay People's Chronicle
10. To Believe in Women: A History
by Lillian Faderman
Lillian Faderman-the Lambda Awardwinning author of Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers-sets the record straight (or unstraight), examining the public work and private correspondence of our most celebrated women.
Compiled by the InsightOut Gay and Lesbian Book Club, http://www.insight outbooks.com.