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Minions of the Moon
Kevin Grierson has a Shadow with a mind of its own. It likes thrills, it likes power, it likes the rush of drugs and danger. From the suburbs of Boston to the streets of New York, from the false glamour of advertising to the dark glamour of hustling and drug-dealing. Grierson's Shadow keeps him walking the edge of destruction and madness. Then a simple robbery goes horribly wrong. With the help of a flawed saint named Leo Dunn, Grierson struggles to banish his Shadow, and succeeds. Temporarily. Years later, sober and settled, at peace with his world, Kevin Grierson meets his Shadow again. And this time it won't go away. This new edition of the Lambda Literary Award-winning novel includes a brand-new Grierson story.
270 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
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March 30, 2022
A very urban fantasy, a horror tale set in a part of our world in which I am lucky enough to have never dwelt - the land of substance abuse and addiction. Kevin Grierson, narrator of this story, is a fifty-four year old gay man living in Manhattan, looking back at his life. He had been a Boston Irish boy (from Dorchester - the same part of Boston in which I grew up), who, much too early in life, stumbled into drugs, alcohol, and renting out his body for sexual encounters. His father, whom he never knew, died in World War II, and Kevin was brought up by his mother, with help from his mother's mother and that woman's sister, Kevin's Aunt Tay. Tay claims to have a gift, "a kind of second sight." She says that Kevin too has a gift, but does not say what that gift might be. Like a number of the people in this story, Kevin's mother has a Shadow - known also as a Silent Partner, a Faileas, a doppelganger, a presence that most people can not see. Kevin can not only see his mother's bad-tempered and drunken Shadow, but he comes to share his own life with such a Shadow as well. Kevin's mother dies "behind the wheel of a car" before Kevin's senior year in high school. Shortly afterwards, Kevin's "Shadow stepped forward for the first time and grabbed control of [Kevin's] life."
The Shadow, who usually goes by the name Fred, is a major character in Kevin's story. One of the blurbs in the front of the book says that the story "deftly uses the addiction-as-doppelganger metaphor," and others commenting on the story also believe that the Shadow might be intended to be metaphorical, although many people in the story see and comment on these Shadow figures. Of course, Kevin could be making up not only the Shadows but also people's reactions to them. (And, after all, Kevin was himself made up by Richard Bowes.) I accept the Shadow people as real beings of some sort. The book makes it plain that Shadows are not - or, at least, not entirely - the bad part of otherwise good people. One of the Shadows, seen late in the story, perhaps the most unusual of these unusual beings, is purely good.
Kevin gets in trouble. Even in high school, he has been working as a gay prostitute. He has his first heterosexual relationship, with a troubled young woman who introduces him to a sort of therapist-cum-guru, who in turn introduces Kevin to alcohol and drugs. Things spiral downward and Kevin's Aunt Tay and his grandmother save him - magically, with an incantation.
Kevin reflects:
At that moment, I realized that my mother was never coming back... That night, finally, I was able to cry for her. Right then, I cried for all poor souls who find themselves cut in two. I cried for my grandmother and for Tay and myself. I cried for drunks and abusers, for the crazed and scared of this fucked-up world. Sweet Jesus, that night I cried for us all.
(It is almost certainly a coincidence, but there was a 1970 musical play about the Irish in New York titled Cry for Us All.)
Kevin, accompanied by his double, goes briefly to New York, where his life becomes still worse. He returns to New England and attends college, making some friends who will have an impact on his life from then on. After graduation, he moves back to New York and, in the one mostly comic sequence in the story, he gets a job writing advertising copy for a large department store. On some days when Kevin is too hung over to go to work, his doppelganger covers for him. The advertisements are just odd and funny enough to seem real.
Terrible things are done, both to Kevin and by him. He is badly beaten, left with "damaged nose cartilage, a couple of broken teeth, and a three-inch gash above [his] left eye. [His] skull was exposed." He has a concussion and amnesia. And every time Kevin is ill or injured or suffers the effects of the substances that he abuses, his double also suffers.
Kevin rather casually disposes of a body, recruiting friends to help. He is not a particularly nice person. That is, not until he meets Leo Dunn, virtually a secular saint, a former drinker whose extraordinary kindness and concern helps Kevin to begin to be a better person.
Dunn is one of the people who save Kevin's life at various times. Others include Aunt Tay, friends from college, new friends too, a young boy to whom Kevin has become something of a surrogate father, and, more than once, his Silent Partner.
Kevin also has a new partner, George, a partner both in business and in life. Kevin, a man who never really had a childhood, joins with George in opening a sort of toy store, "Half Forgotten Things," purveyors of items from 1950s childhoods - toys, lunchboxes, blankets, books - all the things that Kevin should have been able to enjoy as a boy.
But a large such item, a full-size carousel, is offered for sale to Kevin and George. And here the supernatural once again enters the story. The sellers are people (or beings that look like people) whom Kevin's double calls "the Sojourners"; they have horrifying plans for Kevin and his doppelganger.
The people in the book come to life in a way not often seen in fantasy. Some of them are monstrous, some pathetic, some brave and good. Bowes is sometimes very subtle in revealing things about his people. It is something of a cliché that gay men are frequently interested in musical theater, and although this is never really discussed, Kevin is shown to share that interest. There is, for example, this passage:
I staggered in there with a bloody nose. I had been supposed to take Scotty to the zoo. But gin and junk and destiny play funny tricks.
There is nothing in the story to indicate that the last sentence of that quote is especially significant, but that line is taken, slightly emended, from the musical Lady in the Dark.
Jenny made her mind up at seventy-five
She would live to be the oldest woman alive.
But gin and rum and destiny play funny tricks
And poor Jenny kicked the bucket at seventy-six.…
If the reader recognizes the quote, then he or she will realize first that Broadway musicals are enough a part of Grierson's life that he feels no need to explain the quote (or even to say that it is a quote) and secondly that the consequence of the life he was leading would probably result in "kicking the bucket."
One of the other references to musicals is in the following passage. Kevin is visiting his partner George, who is in a hospital, dying of AIDS. Kevin has also had health problems. They are no longer lovers, but they are still close. George is not conscious, but Kevin speaks to him anyway. This is, I think, one of the most affecting passages in the book:
"I never told you about my Shadow and the life he and I had. You would have listened. But I wanted to forget. Maybe that secret was part of what came between us. Another thing that I let my doppelganger wreck.
"I keep wondering what would have happened if I had even just bothered to pretend I was faithful. Would we have stayed together? Would we both be dying or dead now? Should I have warned you about me that first time?
"All I'm sure of is that my life got saved by my bad heart and your good one. It was my heart that got me out of circulation when AIDS was still a mystery. After my bypass when all I wanted was to die, you dragged me back to life, smuggled in tiny bites of forbidden desserts, took me to see Sunday in the Park with George. A very serious evening. Lots of times we were the only two laughing.
"You did all that knowing that you had started to die. When you got sick, I tried to do the same for you. But my magic wasn't as strong as yours."
Richard Bowes mentions in his introductory "Acknowledgements" that "sometimes in fiction the deeply personal can be read as autobiography," but states that this is not the case here. He also credits two other fine authors for their help with this book, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, who, as editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, originally published much of the material that made up this book, and Delia Sherman, who put all the pieces together and showed him "how to turn a book into a novel."
I think that the title of Minions of the Moon might require some explanation. It is a quote from Shakespeare's Henry IV, in which the roguish Sir John Falstaff says
"Let us be Diana's foresters, gentlemen of the shade, minions of the moon."
meaning that he and his friends should be people of the night. Kevin Grierson and his Silent Partner fit that description, as do the other "drunks and abusers,... the crazed and scared of this fucked-up world," all, in some way, creatures of the night. Kevin becomes, at last, a man of the day, of courage and honor.
This is a fine book.
The Shadow, who usually goes by the name Fred, is a major character in Kevin's story. One of the blurbs in the front of the book says that the story "deftly uses the addiction-as-doppelganger metaphor," and others commenting on the story also believe that the Shadow might be intended to be metaphorical, although many people in the story see and comment on these Shadow figures. Of course, Kevin could be making up not only the Shadows but also people's reactions to them. (And, after all, Kevin was himself made up by Richard Bowes.) I accept the Shadow people as real beings of some sort. The book makes it plain that Shadows are not - or, at least, not entirely - the bad part of otherwise good people. One of the Shadows, seen late in the story, perhaps the most unusual of these unusual beings, is purely good.
Kevin gets in trouble. Even in high school, he has been working as a gay prostitute. He has his first heterosexual relationship, with a troubled young woman who introduces him to a sort of therapist-cum-guru, who in turn introduces Kevin to alcohol and drugs. Things spiral downward and Kevin's Aunt Tay and his grandmother save him - magically, with an incantation.
Kevin reflects:
At that moment, I realized that my mother was never coming back... That night, finally, I was able to cry for her. Right then, I cried for all poor souls who find themselves cut in two. I cried for my grandmother and for Tay and myself. I cried for drunks and abusers, for the crazed and scared of this fucked-up world. Sweet Jesus, that night I cried for us all.
(It is almost certainly a coincidence, but there was a 1970 musical play about the Irish in New York titled Cry for Us All.)
Kevin, accompanied by his double, goes briefly to New York, where his life becomes still worse. He returns to New England and attends college, making some friends who will have an impact on his life from then on. After graduation, he moves back to New York and, in the one mostly comic sequence in the story, he gets a job writing advertising copy for a large department store. On some days when Kevin is too hung over to go to work, his doppelganger covers for him. The advertisements are just odd and funny enough to seem real.
Terrible things are done, both to Kevin and by him. He is badly beaten, left with "damaged nose cartilage, a couple of broken teeth, and a three-inch gash above [his] left eye. [His] skull was exposed." He has a concussion and amnesia. And every time Kevin is ill or injured or suffers the effects of the substances that he abuses, his double also suffers.
Kevin rather casually disposes of a body, recruiting friends to help. He is not a particularly nice person. That is, not until he meets Leo Dunn, virtually a secular saint, a former drinker whose extraordinary kindness and concern helps Kevin to begin to be a better person.
Dunn is one of the people who save Kevin's life at various times. Others include Aunt Tay, friends from college, new friends too, a young boy to whom Kevin has become something of a surrogate father, and, more than once, his Silent Partner.
Kevin also has a new partner, George, a partner both in business and in life. Kevin, a man who never really had a childhood, joins with George in opening a sort of toy store, "Half Forgotten Things," purveyors of items from 1950s childhoods - toys, lunchboxes, blankets, books - all the things that Kevin should have been able to enjoy as a boy.
But a large such item, a full-size carousel, is offered for sale to Kevin and George. And here the supernatural once again enters the story. The sellers are people (or beings that look like people) whom Kevin's double calls "the Sojourners"; they have horrifying plans for Kevin and his doppelganger.
The people in the book come to life in a way not often seen in fantasy. Some of them are monstrous, some pathetic, some brave and good. Bowes is sometimes very subtle in revealing things about his people. It is something of a cliché that gay men are frequently interested in musical theater, and although this is never really discussed, Kevin is shown to share that interest. There is, for example, this passage:
I staggered in there with a bloody nose. I had been supposed to take Scotty to the zoo. But gin and junk and destiny play funny tricks.
There is nothing in the story to indicate that the last sentence of that quote is especially significant, but that line is taken, slightly emended, from the musical Lady in the Dark.
Jenny made her mind up at seventy-five
She would live to be the oldest woman alive.
But gin and rum and destiny play funny tricks
And poor Jenny kicked the bucket at seventy-six.…
If the reader recognizes the quote, then he or she will realize first that Broadway musicals are enough a part of Grierson's life that he feels no need to explain the quote (or even to say that it is a quote) and secondly that the consequence of the life he was leading would probably result in "kicking the bucket."
One of the other references to musicals is in the following passage. Kevin is visiting his partner George, who is in a hospital, dying of AIDS. Kevin has also had health problems. They are no longer lovers, but they are still close. George is not conscious, but Kevin speaks to him anyway. This is, I think, one of the most affecting passages in the book:
"I never told you about my Shadow and the life he and I had. You would have listened. But I wanted to forget. Maybe that secret was part of what came between us. Another thing that I let my doppelganger wreck.
"I keep wondering what would have happened if I had even just bothered to pretend I was faithful. Would we have stayed together? Would we both be dying or dead now? Should I have warned you about me that first time?
"All I'm sure of is that my life got saved by my bad heart and your good one. It was my heart that got me out of circulation when AIDS was still a mystery. After my bypass when all I wanted was to die, you dragged me back to life, smuggled in tiny bites of forbidden desserts, took me to see Sunday in the Park with George. A very serious evening. Lots of times we were the only two laughing.
"You did all that knowing that you had started to die. When you got sick, I tried to do the same for you. But my magic wasn't as strong as yours."
Richard Bowes mentions in his introductory "Acknowledgements" that "sometimes in fiction the deeply personal can be read as autobiography," but states that this is not the case here. He also credits two other fine authors for their help with this book, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, who, as editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, originally published much of the material that made up this book, and Delia Sherman, who put all the pieces together and showed him "how to turn a book into a novel."
I think that the title of Minions of the Moon might require some explanation. It is a quote from Shakespeare's Henry IV, in which the roguish Sir John Falstaff says
"Let us be Diana's foresters, gentlemen of the shade, minions of the moon."
meaning that he and his friends should be people of the night. Kevin Grierson and his Silent Partner fit that description, as do the other "drunks and abusers,... the crazed and scared of this fucked-up world," all, in some way, creatures of the night. Kevin becomes, at last, a man of the day, of courage and honor.
This is a fine book.
August 27, 2016
Stuff I Read – Minions of the Moon by Richard Bowes Review
Okay so this book broke me just a bit. It wasn't even what I thought it was, because I went into the book thinking (for whatever reason) that it was a book of short stories and no, it's a novel and yes, it is absolutely amazing. It's a book that explores being queer at a time when it wasn't something that was safe. When it wasn't even something that was legal. It examines family and inheritance and rage and self harm and sex and sexuality and escape and freedom and risk and responsibility and seriously, it's a book that does a lot. It's a novel told as something of an autobiography of the main character, too, unfolding across his entire life while continually bringing the story back to the present of the novel, where he's older and the shadows that he's cast back into the past are rushing forward to try and claim him. Oh yeah, it's also a novel about shadows. About light and dark, which is not to say good and evil.
Kevin is a young man who doesn't really know himself. He's from a rather fractured home with an absent father and a mother who has a shadow, a part of herself that comes out and is all rage and danger. And having a shadow turns out to be something Kevin shares with her, something that sets him apart, among other things. He's fractured, caught between these two selves, between destruction and discovery. It's his shadow who is assertive, who is active, while Kevin himself is more passive, is more vulnerable. And yet neither of them can wholly navigate the world without the other. They are alone and seeking something that feels right and never really get the chance to explore it because the world isn't such that allows people like him to explore safely. There are dangers and there are people waiting to exploit him, waiting to hurt him. Which informs him how to treat himself, this whole situation of loathing and harm and love and lust spiraling around so that Kevin's never quite sure what to do, lets events sweep him by as he hopes he'll land right.
And there's also this great feel that Kevin and his shadow live almost like Dorian Grey and his portrait, the shadow showing the scars, the age, the damage, and Kevin strangely removed from it, in fair enough health and never that injured or damaged. Not physically, at least. Because while his shadow wears the marks of a hard life, he's more or less at peace with that. Where as Kevin…well, together they might have made a complete person but Kevin runs from his shadow, his silent partner, and in doing so runs from a part of himself. It's that fracturing that draws him back into the strange world, into dreams, into the lives he's effected and doesn't want to own up to. And the novel is a journey of him coming to terms with it, finally facing the past and his own demons and trying to make some sense of it. Trying to make right by it. I love almost everything about this book, how Kevin's sexuality is something he views almost as placed on him, like he's always acted on instead of the one acting, and how this follows him through life, how he's still discovering it even when he's older. How it always seems to take him by surprise.
The novel is about dreams and about magic, too, about plots and about debts coming due. It's about cycles of harm and how Kevin seeks to break them. How he hopes to heal others and, maybe in doing that, heal himself. His relationships through his life are compelling, layered. From his relationship with the woman who got him into drugs to his relationship with a weird cultish not-doctor to his relationship with his great aunt and the rest of his family and beyond that to his shadow and to the guru Leo Dunn and his college friends and everyone, the character work is solid and compelling. And through it all Kevin remains a complex person, full and real, his motivations complex and his failings wrenching. There are so many places in this book where I had to pause and walk away a second before returning. Ghosts of harm down, of mistakes, of betrayals. Ghosts of the harm that Kevin did and that he had nothing to do with. And through it all, through the shadows and the ugliness and the sickness and the death, a hope. A redemptive hope that the world is not all darkness. That there is light and there is trying to do good. To do better. That we are all flawed but that we all deserve love. And wow, yeah, it's just an amazing read, and to me a nearly perfect 9.75/10.
Okay so this book broke me just a bit. It wasn't even what I thought it was, because I went into the book thinking (for whatever reason) that it was a book of short stories and no, it's a novel and yes, it is absolutely amazing. It's a book that explores being queer at a time when it wasn't something that was safe. When it wasn't even something that was legal. It examines family and inheritance and rage and self harm and sex and sexuality and escape and freedom and risk and responsibility and seriously, it's a book that does a lot. It's a novel told as something of an autobiography of the main character, too, unfolding across his entire life while continually bringing the story back to the present of the novel, where he's older and the shadows that he's cast back into the past are rushing forward to try and claim him. Oh yeah, it's also a novel about shadows. About light and dark, which is not to say good and evil.
Kevin is a young man who doesn't really know himself. He's from a rather fractured home with an absent father and a mother who has a shadow, a part of herself that comes out and is all rage and danger. And having a shadow turns out to be something Kevin shares with her, something that sets him apart, among other things. He's fractured, caught between these two selves, between destruction and discovery. It's his shadow who is assertive, who is active, while Kevin himself is more passive, is more vulnerable. And yet neither of them can wholly navigate the world without the other. They are alone and seeking something that feels right and never really get the chance to explore it because the world isn't such that allows people like him to explore safely. There are dangers and there are people waiting to exploit him, waiting to hurt him. Which informs him how to treat himself, this whole situation of loathing and harm and love and lust spiraling around so that Kevin's never quite sure what to do, lets events sweep him by as he hopes he'll land right.
And there's also this great feel that Kevin and his shadow live almost like Dorian Grey and his portrait, the shadow showing the scars, the age, the damage, and Kevin strangely removed from it, in fair enough health and never that injured or damaged. Not physically, at least. Because while his shadow wears the marks of a hard life, he's more or less at peace with that. Where as Kevin…well, together they might have made a complete person but Kevin runs from his shadow, his silent partner, and in doing so runs from a part of himself. It's that fracturing that draws him back into the strange world, into dreams, into the lives he's effected and doesn't want to own up to. And the novel is a journey of him coming to terms with it, finally facing the past and his own demons and trying to make some sense of it. Trying to make right by it. I love almost everything about this book, how Kevin's sexuality is something he views almost as placed on him, like he's always acted on instead of the one acting, and how this follows him through life, how he's still discovering it even when he's older. How it always seems to take him by surprise.
The novel is about dreams and about magic, too, about plots and about debts coming due. It's about cycles of harm and how Kevin seeks to break them. How he hopes to heal others and, maybe in doing that, heal himself. His relationships through his life are compelling, layered. From his relationship with the woman who got him into drugs to his relationship with a weird cultish not-doctor to his relationship with his great aunt and the rest of his family and beyond that to his shadow and to the guru Leo Dunn and his college friends and everyone, the character work is solid and compelling. And through it all Kevin remains a complex person, full and real, his motivations complex and his failings wrenching. There are so many places in this book where I had to pause and walk away a second before returning. Ghosts of harm down, of mistakes, of betrayals. Ghosts of the harm that Kevin did and that he had nothing to do with. And through it all, through the shadows and the ugliness and the sickness and the death, a hope. A redemptive hope that the world is not all darkness. That there is light and there is trying to do good. To do better. That we are all flawed but that we all deserve love. And wow, yeah, it's just an amazing read, and to me a nearly perfect 9.75/10.
August 19, 2013
Kevin Grierson comes from an Irish-American family that's cursed by violence, booze and shadows. The Shadows, in this case, are real quasi-people who embody all of the worst instincts and impulses that a person can have. They are like the Id, given substance. In Grierson's case, his Shadow pushes him into drug and sexual addiction and the petty crime that goes along with that lifestyle. The novel, told in a series of vivid flashbacks, starts in the late 40's, in Boston and ends in the 90's in New York's West Village.
A strange coming of age story told in first person, Minions takes us on Kevin's journey as he struggles to find out where he and his Shadow are separate entities. On one hand, the doppelganger drags him closer to hell and failure; on the other, the Shadow is streetwise and savvy and saves Kevin in more than one instance. Kevin and his Shadow exist in any uneasy balance with each other. They move from tragedies, failed relationships (with both men and women), and dangerous situations together, helping each other out in a sick, co-dependent-yet oddly comforting way.
The scenes of sexual degradation and drug dementia are chilling and horrific in their accuracy. It's part of what makes this a horror novel-the all-too real world of chemical dependency. As disturbing as these scenes are, they are what keeps this novel edge-of-seat reading.Bowes' voice (as Kevin) is so real that at times I thought I was reading an autobiography. This is because Bowes makes us care about Kevin, even when he does horrible things. We're with him when he finds love and transcendence, as well as with him down in gutter, looking up towards the stars.
The fantastic element is skillfully woven into the story. The mechanics of the Shadow are never properly explained-a vague telepathic awareness of each other when they're split up is alluded to, never elucidated. The characters that enter Kevin's life walk and breathe on the page, even if they appear for only a couple of scenes.The locales, particularly the seamy underside of New York, seem to be characters themselves.
Minions on the Moon is one of those novels that completely transcends the genre for which it was marketed. It is a stunning examination of identity and the search for meaning when you're under the influence of various addictions and self-destructive behaviors. It's stronger than any twelve-step program could ever be.
A strange coming of age story told in first person, Minions takes us on Kevin's journey as he struggles to find out where he and his Shadow are separate entities. On one hand, the doppelganger drags him closer to hell and failure; on the other, the Shadow is streetwise and savvy and saves Kevin in more than one instance. Kevin and his Shadow exist in any uneasy balance with each other. They move from tragedies, failed relationships (with both men and women), and dangerous situations together, helping each other out in a sick, co-dependent-yet oddly comforting way.
The scenes of sexual degradation and drug dementia are chilling and horrific in their accuracy. It's part of what makes this a horror novel-the all-too real world of chemical dependency. As disturbing as these scenes are, they are what keeps this novel edge-of-seat reading.Bowes' voice (as Kevin) is so real that at times I thought I was reading an autobiography. This is because Bowes makes us care about Kevin, even when he does horrible things. We're with him when he finds love and transcendence, as well as with him down in gutter, looking up towards the stars.
The fantastic element is skillfully woven into the story. The mechanics of the Shadow are never properly explained-a vague telepathic awareness of each other when they're split up is alluded to, never elucidated. The characters that enter Kevin's life walk and breathe on the page, even if they appear for only a couple of scenes.The locales, particularly the seamy underside of New York, seem to be characters themselves.
Minions on the Moon is one of those novels that completely transcends the genre for which it was marketed. It is a stunning examination of identity and the search for meaning when you're under the influence of various addictions and self-destructive behaviors. It's stronger than any twelve-step program could ever be.
December 26, 2009
So goddamn weird. Is it sci-fi? Urban drug drama? Dark City?
This tale is about a gay drug addict who may or may not have an evil twin. It's a long time before you find out if the evil twin is real, a figment of the hero's imagination, or just a metaphor for drug and alcohol addiction, and even when you do find out, you're stilol not entirely sure what the deal is. Stories don't come much darker than this one, which is the main reason I like it.
Still, there are times when the darkness bogs the story down. In fact, there isn't so much a single story as a string of dark and depressing events. Maybe a more compelling plot would have made this an easier read?
One thing is a definite: There ain't another novel like this one.
This tale is about a gay drug addict who may or may not have an evil twin. It's a long time before you find out if the evil twin is real, a figment of the hero's imagination, or just a metaphor for drug and alcohol addiction, and even when you do find out, you're stilol not entirely sure what the deal is. Stories don't come much darker than this one, which is the main reason I like it.
Still, there are times when the darkness bogs the story down. In fact, there isn't so much a single story as a string of dark and depressing events. Maybe a more compelling plot would have made this an easier read?
One thing is a definite: There ain't another novel like this one.
March 3, 2009
My opinion of this book went from almost stopped reading to couldn't put it down - and back and forth between those two several times. Averaging those out, it's three stars. It's a great idea for a horror story - a real "live" doppelganger shadoes the life of a young man born into the classic cursed Irish family and who runs away to the very mean streets of NYC. The non-linear plot line works sometimes, and sometimes it seems used to fill in a hole in the true narrative of the story. Also, when telling a story in the first person, there's bound to be more telling instead of showing, and that can pull a reader right out of the action. However, despite all the negatives I've mentioned, Mr. Bowes created a fascinating and real character for us to feel good and bad about. There's something very real about Kevin, something most writers of fantasy/horror don't even attempt, let alone achieve.
December 26, 2016
An evocative, lyrical sojourn that spans decades through the perspective of a materially and metaphysically divided self living and working in New York City. I hesitate to call this fantasy because, while the fantastic appears, so, too, does the uncanny. The unreal nature of this book is untethered from traditional, expected ideas about how the literature of the fantastic should operate, and this free-form exploration lends texture to the prose that I rarely see anymore in contemporary literature. Bowes conjures memories of James Salter's Light Years and Paul Auster's New York trilogy, in the best possible way.
October 15, 2014
4.25 stars.
A well-narrated audiobook that uses paranormal/fantasy aspects to deal with the very gritty reality. Very well-done and interesting, though it could have benefited from a tighter story. In the end it drew out a bit. Yet, it is something completely different and I can highly recommend it!!!
A well-narrated audiobook that uses paranormal/fantasy aspects to deal with the very gritty reality. Very well-done and interesting, though it could have benefited from a tighter story. In the end it drew out a bit. Yet, it is something completely different and I can highly recommend it!!!
January 10, 2011
Very enjoyable. Although, it was tough for me to follow all of the jumps back and forth through time. It didn't seem to me as if these transitions were handled smoothly enough.
May 6, 2020
Although a portion of "Minions of the Moon", titled “Streetcar Dreams”, won the 1998 World Fantasy Award as best novella, the novel may or may not be fantasy. It is the story of the descent
into and ascension from addiction [sexual, drug, and alcohol] of a young man named Kevin Grierson, whose life we follow from a 1950s childhood to middle age in the 1990s. If, as Kevin does, the reader believes that the phantasms who inhabit his world are true doppelgangers visible only to addicts, it is a fantasy. If the reader believes, as does Kevin’s therapist, the phantasms to be psychological constructs, it is a modern novel of sin and redemption, of the hero’s quest, of the growth of the human soul. Kevin grows up in Boston with his widowed mother, an Irish Catholic who may have a doppelganger, or may be a manic-depressive with two personalities. In any event, when she is institutionalized, Kevin is reared by her large family in Dorchester’s “Queenaheaven” Parish. Seduced first at the YMCA, then seduced and betrayed by a girl he hero-worships, Kevin runs off to New York City and life as a male prostitute. Found by his uncles and sent to military school, then college, Kevin returns to Manhattan as an advertising executive, and starts his slide into addiction. At 34, he decides to go straight, with the aid of Leo, his understanding therapist. The novel follows him in his quest for self-understanding. This is exceptionally well-written novel that demands a lot from the reader.
into and ascension from addiction [sexual, drug, and alcohol] of a young man named Kevin Grierson, whose life we follow from a 1950s childhood to middle age in the 1990s. If, as Kevin does, the reader believes that the phantasms who inhabit his world are true doppelgangers visible only to addicts, it is a fantasy. If the reader believes, as does Kevin’s therapist, the phantasms to be psychological constructs, it is a modern novel of sin and redemption, of the hero’s quest, of the growth of the human soul. Kevin grows up in Boston with his widowed mother, an Irish Catholic who may have a doppelganger, or may be a manic-depressive with two personalities. In any event, when she is institutionalized, Kevin is reared by her large family in Dorchester’s “Queenaheaven” Parish. Seduced first at the YMCA, then seduced and betrayed by a girl he hero-worships, Kevin runs off to New York City and life as a male prostitute. Found by his uncles and sent to military school, then college, Kevin returns to Manhattan as an advertising executive, and starts his slide into addiction. At 34, he decides to go straight, with the aid of Leo, his understanding therapist. The novel follows him in his quest for self-understanding. This is exceptionally well-written novel that demands a lot from the reader.
April 29, 2018
This book started out as a novella which won the World Fantasy Award in 1998. Bowes expanded it into a full novel and it won the Lambda Literary Award for SF/Fantasy/Horror in 2000. It’s sort of an urban fantasy about a man with a shadow self or doppelganger. It was a strange story. I felt like the author couldn’t make up his mind on whether the doppelganger was real or imaginary. At times nobody saw it; other times people would report to Kevin, the main character, that they thought they had seen him somewhere where Kevin wasn’t. Other times people saw the two of them together. It was very confusing, and although I have a good suspension of disbelief, I couldn’t tell what was real outside of Kevin’s frame of reference and what wasn’t. Maybe that was the point.
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Want to read
April 23, 2023the Paragons of Queer Speculative Fiction series showcases the finer works of storytelling in the English language that embrace a variety of gender and sexual identities through the lens of the fantastical, the otherworldly, the supernatural, the yet to be. These are the books that continue to resonate with readers despite the passage of time. these are the books that a queered culture demands.
Lethe Press
Lethe Press
May 10, 2017
This was like Irish folklore fantasy meets gritty New York urban memoir with some meditation on the nature of being human and duality thrown in. Also, the AIDS epidemic. So it was really different and pretty great.
December 19, 2013
Very nice book but really really strange and quite depressing at the same time. I feel like it would be a great book having few hundreds pages less, or more "activity" in it...
As it is I dropped reading a few months ago and when I feel like I would like to know how it ends it's quite of counteracted by the displeasure of having to read such a heavy writing style.
As it is I dropped reading a few months ago and when I feel like I would like to know how it ends it's quite of counteracted by the displeasure of having to read such a heavy writing style.
August 10, 2008
I guess I'm just a sucker for sci-fi written in a queer voice. Or was it queer fiction with a sci-fi voice?
December 21, 2008
A bit like Neil Gaiman but better.
May 28, 2012
Found it a little hard to follow, it seemed to jump around quite a bit.
Had some trouble keeping interest through out the book.
Had some trouble keeping interest through out the book.
May 7, 2016
Strange, sad, fascinating, intriguing.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews