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Hide
Set in a declining textile town in North Carolina, Hide is the love story of Wendell Wilson, a taxidermist, and Frank Clifton, a veteran of World War II. They meet after the war, in a time when such love holds real danger. But, severing nearly all ties with the rest of the world, they carve out a home for themselves on the outskirts of town and for decades the routine of self-reliant domesticity--Wendell's cooking, Frank's care for a yard no one sees, and the vicarious drama of courtroom TV--seems to protect them.
But when Wendell finds Frank lying motionless outside at the age of eighty-three, their carefully crafted life together begins to unravel. As Frank's physical strength deteriorates and his memory dissolves, Wendell struggles in vain to keep him healthy and to hold onto the man he once knew until, faced with giving care beyond his capacity, he must come to terms with the consequences of half a century in seclusion, the sacrifices they made for each other, and the different lives they might have lived--and most especially the impending, inexorable loss of the one they had.
Impossibly tender, gently funny, and gorgeously rendered, Hide is a singularly powerful debut.
But when Wendell finds Frank lying motionless outside at the age of eighty-three, their carefully crafted life together begins to unravel. As Frank's physical strength deteriorates and his memory dissolves, Wendell struggles in vain to keep him healthy and to hold onto the man he once knew until, faced with giving care beyond his capacity, he must come to terms with the consequences of half a century in seclusion, the sacrifices they made for each other, and the different lives they might have lived--and most especially the impending, inexorable loss of the one they had.
Impossibly tender, gently funny, and gorgeously rendered, Hide is a singularly powerful debut.
272 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 16, 2016
56 people are currently reading
1653 people want to read
About the author
Matthew Griffin
55 books63 followersMatthew Griffin is a graduate of Wake Forest University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He has taught composition, literature, and creative writing at the University of Iowa and Walters State Community College, and he worked for several years as Assistant to the Director of Highlander Research and Education Center, a renowned hub of grassroots organizing for social justice throughout the South and Appalachia. He was born and raised in North Carolina and now lives with his husband and too many pets in Louisiana, where he is a visiting professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 248 reviews
November 24, 2015
"We come from the earth...
We return to the earth...
And inbetween we garden"
....I don't know who said the above words - but they are the first I spoke this morning.
while still in bed next to my husband ...having finished reading "HIDE", 'seconds' ago!
This is the MOST MOST MOST beautiful story!!!!!!!
THE PROSE is GORGEOUS! THE CHARACTERS will 'not' be forgotten!
This story touched every cell in my body. I'm confident to HIGHLY RECOMMEND this book to EVERY LIVING HUMAN BEING who values 'compassion, passion, or empathy towards the following:
breathing, love, relationships, civil rights, gardening, being different, having to hide or keep
a secret, fruitcake, dogs, birds, the warm sun, the country, sickness, aging, caretakers,
personal pride, walking, vegetables, sourdough starter, respect for those who fight in
our wars, a home, eating, tasting, scrubbing and cleaning, trembling and wobbling, peaches,
TV the news and current events, teeth, intimacy and conversations, stubbornness, isolation,
humor, persistence, tolerance, mothers, taxidermy, shame, desperation, touch, imperfections,
the vacuum, nervousness, cakes for dinner, memory loss, holding hands,
stillness, rest, sleep.
It's about GOD DAMN TIME THIS BOOK HAS BEEN WRITTEN is what I 'have' to say!!!!!
Thank You to Bloomsbury Publishing, Netgalley, and my new Hero *Matthew Griffin*
We return to the earth...
And inbetween we garden"
....I don't know who said the above words - but they are the first I spoke this morning.
while still in bed next to my husband ...having finished reading "HIDE", 'seconds' ago!
This is the MOST MOST MOST beautiful story!!!!!!!
THE PROSE is GORGEOUS! THE CHARACTERS will 'not' be forgotten!
This story touched every cell in my body. I'm confident to HIGHLY RECOMMEND this book to EVERY LIVING HUMAN BEING who values 'compassion, passion, or empathy towards the following:
breathing, love, relationships, civil rights, gardening, being different, having to hide or keep
a secret, fruitcake, dogs, birds, the warm sun, the country, sickness, aging, caretakers,
personal pride, walking, vegetables, sourdough starter, respect for those who fight in
our wars, a home, eating, tasting, scrubbing and cleaning, trembling and wobbling, peaches,
TV the news and current events, teeth, intimacy and conversations, stubbornness, isolation,
humor, persistence, tolerance, mothers, taxidermy, shame, desperation, touch, imperfections,
the vacuum, nervousness, cakes for dinner, memory loss, holding hands,
stillness, rest, sleep.
It's about GOD DAMN TIME THIS BOOK HAS BEEN WRITTEN is what I 'have' to say!!!!!
Thank You to Bloomsbury Publishing, Netgalley, and my new Hero *Matthew Griffin*
May 17, 2016
1.5 stars
Frank and Wendall have to pretend to be brothers. They can't tell anyone that they really live together and aren't related. They are living in North Carolina during a time that their lifestyle could end them in jail. Or worse.
In the psychiatric literature, in the diagnositc manuals, they described the pathological disturbance of the homosexual, in Congress they railed against degenerates, deviants, pederants, subversives, sodomites, sexual psychopaths, in the New York Times it was perverts, it was unnatural relations, but for the papers down here, even that was too specific, too close to describing some actual thing. When those men were arrested, it was for crimes against nature, as though they'd been caught kicking up a public flower beds.
Frank, who is a veteran of WW2 and had earned a college degree takes a grueling job at the local textile mill so that he and Wendall (who practices taxidermy) can move out to nowhere and live in peace.
Then Wendall finds Frank is his garden and has to call out an ambulance. Frank's health is worse than they thought and the doctors tell them (they pose as brothers still) that Frank needs to take it easy now.
"Nobody ever had 'cardiomyopathy' when I was a boy. They've made up that entire diagnosis just to sell more medicine, I'd bet you money. It's a racket. The only thing I'm suffering from is getting older. Stiff joints, that's all this is."
Frank is not the easiest of patients. Actually, I despised both these characters. Neither man had any characteristics that made me like them. I felt for what they had gone through but I wanted to knock both of their hateful arses over the head.
The story tries to tell some of their past life of Frank losing his mom and family by choosing Wendall but honestly, it's piss poorly done.
We never wrote each other love letters, anything someone might find, and he never came to my shop at the same time two days in a row, or by the same path through the downtown streets and alleys. Once I went to throw some carcasses in the trash can out back-the big noticeable ones I had to haul off myself, but the smaller ones, squirrels and possums and owls, I tossed in the trash can and nobody was the wiser-only to find him crawling on hand and knee down the alley to stay below the line of sight of some poor tenement family eating their gruel in the window above.
During the time after Frank's health problems he continues to decline in health. He becomes even more hateful by demanding that Wendall make him specific foods to eat and then gets on a weird fruitcake binge to where that is all he will eat.
I do realize that some of it was from the beginnings of dementia, but some of it was just him being an ass. Then Wendall, for someone who supposedly loved Frank for over fifty years-he sure came across as really not liking him very much. He resents every frigging thing. Then the author goes into great detail telling the reader. EVERY. SINGLE. DETAIL. Of everything.
Then they get a dog.
I should have dnf'd this book.
Booksource: Netgalley in exchange for review.
My very sweet friend Elyse loved this book and looked at it totally different. AND there is nothing wrong with that. No two readers ever read the same book after all.
Frank and Wendall have to pretend to be brothers. They can't tell anyone that they really live together and aren't related. They are living in North Carolina during a time that their lifestyle could end them in jail. Or worse.
In the psychiatric literature, in the diagnositc manuals, they described the pathological disturbance of the homosexual, in Congress they railed against degenerates, deviants, pederants, subversives, sodomites, sexual psychopaths, in the New York Times it was perverts, it was unnatural relations, but for the papers down here, even that was too specific, too close to describing some actual thing. When those men were arrested, it was for crimes against nature, as though they'd been caught kicking up a public flower beds.
Frank, who is a veteran of WW2 and had earned a college degree takes a grueling job at the local textile mill so that he and Wendall (who practices taxidermy) can move out to nowhere and live in peace.
Then Wendall finds Frank is his garden and has to call out an ambulance. Frank's health is worse than they thought and the doctors tell them (they pose as brothers still) that Frank needs to take it easy now.
"Nobody ever had 'cardiomyopathy' when I was a boy. They've made up that entire diagnosis just to sell more medicine, I'd bet you money. It's a racket. The only thing I'm suffering from is getting older. Stiff joints, that's all this is."
Frank is not the easiest of patients. Actually, I despised both these characters. Neither man had any characteristics that made me like them. I felt for what they had gone through but I wanted to knock both of their hateful arses over the head.
The story tries to tell some of their past life of Frank losing his mom and family by choosing Wendall but honestly, it's piss poorly done.
We never wrote each other love letters, anything someone might find, and he never came to my shop at the same time two days in a row, or by the same path through the downtown streets and alleys. Once I went to throw some carcasses in the trash can out back-the big noticeable ones I had to haul off myself, but the smaller ones, squirrels and possums and owls, I tossed in the trash can and nobody was the wiser-only to find him crawling on hand and knee down the alley to stay below the line of sight of some poor tenement family eating their gruel in the window above.
During the time after Frank's health problems he continues to decline in health. He becomes even more hateful by demanding that Wendall make him specific foods to eat and then gets on a weird fruitcake binge to where that is all he will eat.
I do realize that some of it was from the beginnings of dementia, but some of it was just him being an ass. Then Wendall, for someone who supposedly loved Frank for over fifty years-he sure came across as really not liking him very much. He resents every frigging thing. Then the author goes into great detail telling the reader. EVERY. SINGLE. DETAIL. Of everything.
Then they get a dog.
I should have dnf'd this book.
Booksource: Netgalley in exchange for review.
My very sweet friend Elyse loved this book and looked at it totally different. AND there is nothing wrong with that. No two readers ever read the same book after all.
December 20, 2015
Erase! Erase! Erase the gruesome image out of my mind right this minute! My brain thumbs its nose at my command, and the damn scene lives on. Folks, this was not supposed to be horror. It was supposed to be a quiet book. Quiet my ass. There’s a horrendous event involving a pet and it eclipses everything else. And the scene drags on and on. Once it’s over, you’re still reminded of it to the very end. I wish I had been warned; I would have avoided this book like the plague.
The book is about two gay men, Wendell and Frank, who’ve lived together for over 30 years. They’ve had to hide their love from the world. It’s impossible not to feel sorry for them. The isolation was huge, which bonded them even more because they only had each other. I believed their love story, and it was told in prose that was perfectly rendered. The book begins with Frank having a stroke, and the rest of the book is about Wendell taking care of him, with a few flashbacks to their earlier lives.
I’ve wracked my brain to come up with other positives, but I can’t. Complaint Board is front and center. Of course, Complaint No. 1, the eternal horrific pet scene, trumps everything, but I do have lots of other things I’m frowning about.
Complaint 2: No, I don’t want to watch a taxidermist at work. No thank you. I don’t even think I need to be polite about this. Even one scene, in all its grossness, is too many, and there were numerous ones. The writer loves detail, and he has no qualms about describing every little disgusting aspect of taxidermy. I’m guessing that the title, Hide, refers not only to the couple’s hiding, but also to an animal’s hide. (I shake my head, fully a-shiver.)
Complaint 3: I can’t stand the guy. Now, before I’m attacked for being ridiculously hard on a stroke victim (heartless, some might say), let me just say that I didn’t like Frank in his earlier life either. Pre-stroke, he was stubborn and proud, boring and silent. He seemed cardboard, and I had trouble understanding what Wendell saw in him. After the stroke, Frank was child-like, but he had none of the cuteness or sweetness of a kid—only the brattishness. He was so obstinate and cantankerous it was hard for me to sympathize with him.
Complaint 4. Stop rerunning reality. I know the author wanted to really make it clear how hard it is to care for a loved one who has stroked out, and I appreciate it on paper. But I was sick to death of the same routine over and over: saintly Wendell struggling to keep Frank safe, Frank fighting him at every turn, and Wendell lovingly putting up with all Frank’s crap and being totally exasperated. Over and over ad nauseum. Wendell should have put Frank in a home (assuming he could pass him off as a friend or cousin he was helping), but yes, that would have been a different book. I felt zero connection to Frank, and only a smidgeon of a connection to Wendell.
Complaint 5: Bring in some outside players, will you? I get that we were supposed to appreciate the sadness of their isolation, but I wanted some troublemakers to appear so I could feel more for Wendell and Frank as a team struggling against the cruel, unaccepting world. They were boring and their lives were boring. They were so insular it was claustrophobic.
Complaint 6: No, I really don’t want to read minute details about someone forcing dentures into the mouth of a stroke victim. I really don’t. The denture scene is super grotesque and disturbing. And there is just too much description of everything else. Every little thing, especially how to operate or fix something, is described in excruciating detail—from making a belt hole, to working a vacuum, to running a lawnmower. I found one descriptive sentence that was 23 lines long. Had the author told us details of Wendell’s inner life instead of details of inanimate objects, I would have gulped it down. I prefer psychology to a user’s guide any day.
This book made me incredibly uptight the whole time I was reading it. I had to skip lots of pages due to gore overload, and I spent lots of time being pissed at their eternal bickering and Wendell’s inability to accept Frank’s condition. I also spent tons of time wanting to escape from having to read all the instruction manual-type descriptions. This book was boring, punctuated by big-eyed horrified. The biggest deal-breaker by far was the gruesome event involving a pet; not for the faint of heart.
I see that people love this book, which I respect but don’t understand. Bring on the tomatoes, I’ll duck as fast as I can. Sorry, just not my cuppa.
Thanks to Netgalley for an advance copy.
The book is about two gay men, Wendell and Frank, who’ve lived together for over 30 years. They’ve had to hide their love from the world. It’s impossible not to feel sorry for them. The isolation was huge, which bonded them even more because they only had each other. I believed their love story, and it was told in prose that was perfectly rendered. The book begins with Frank having a stroke, and the rest of the book is about Wendell taking care of him, with a few flashbacks to their earlier lives.
I’ve wracked my brain to come up with other positives, but I can’t. Complaint Board is front and center. Of course, Complaint No. 1, the eternal horrific pet scene, trumps everything, but I do have lots of other things I’m frowning about.
Complaint 2: No, I don’t want to watch a taxidermist at work. No thank you. I don’t even think I need to be polite about this. Even one scene, in all its grossness, is too many, and there were numerous ones. The writer loves detail, and he has no qualms about describing every little disgusting aspect of taxidermy. I’m guessing that the title, Hide, refers not only to the couple’s hiding, but also to an animal’s hide. (I shake my head, fully a-shiver.)
Complaint 3: I can’t stand the guy. Now, before I’m attacked for being ridiculously hard on a stroke victim (heartless, some might say), let me just say that I didn’t like Frank in his earlier life either. Pre-stroke, he was stubborn and proud, boring and silent. He seemed cardboard, and I had trouble understanding what Wendell saw in him. After the stroke, Frank was child-like, but he had none of the cuteness or sweetness of a kid—only the brattishness. He was so obstinate and cantankerous it was hard for me to sympathize with him.
Complaint 4. Stop rerunning reality. I know the author wanted to really make it clear how hard it is to care for a loved one who has stroked out, and I appreciate it on paper. But I was sick to death of the same routine over and over: saintly Wendell struggling to keep Frank safe, Frank fighting him at every turn, and Wendell lovingly putting up with all Frank’s crap and being totally exasperated. Over and over ad nauseum. Wendell should have put Frank in a home (assuming he could pass him off as a friend or cousin he was helping), but yes, that would have been a different book. I felt zero connection to Frank, and only a smidgeon of a connection to Wendell.
Complaint 5: Bring in some outside players, will you? I get that we were supposed to appreciate the sadness of their isolation, but I wanted some troublemakers to appear so I could feel more for Wendell and Frank as a team struggling against the cruel, unaccepting world. They were boring and their lives were boring. They were so insular it was claustrophobic.
Complaint 6: No, I really don’t want to read minute details about someone forcing dentures into the mouth of a stroke victim. I really don’t. The denture scene is super grotesque and disturbing. And there is just too much description of everything else. Every little thing, especially how to operate or fix something, is described in excruciating detail—from making a belt hole, to working a vacuum, to running a lawnmower. I found one descriptive sentence that was 23 lines long. Had the author told us details of Wendell’s inner life instead of details of inanimate objects, I would have gulped it down. I prefer psychology to a user’s guide any day.
This book made me incredibly uptight the whole time I was reading it. I had to skip lots of pages due to gore overload, and I spent lots of time being pissed at their eternal bickering and Wendell’s inability to accept Frank’s condition. I also spent tons of time wanting to escape from having to read all the instruction manual-type descriptions. This book was boring, punctuated by big-eyed horrified. The biggest deal-breaker by far was the gruesome event involving a pet; not for the faint of heart.
I see that people love this book, which I respect but don’t understand. Bring on the tomatoes, I’ll duck as fast as I can. Sorry, just not my cuppa.
Thanks to Netgalley for an advance copy.
October 29, 2015
I'd rate this 4.5, maybe even 4.75 stars.
Full disclosure: I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review. Many thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury USA for making it available!
Poignant, beautiful, and moving, Matthew Griffin's Hide is a powerful love story that you don't often see depicted in movies, books, or television shows, but it is truly resonant and relevant.
It isn't long after World War II when Frank, returning home from military service, meets Wendell, a shy, taciturn taxidermist, in a rural North Carolina town. At this time in society, relationships such as theirs could mean being ostracized from their families, losing their jobs, shock treatments or institutionalization, going to jail, even losing their lives. But the two are drawn to each other, and decide to move into a house on the outskirts of town, where other than going to work each day they keep to themselves.
It's a solitary existence and a life filled with the fear of discovery, but their love endures for more than 50 years. And then one day, Wendell finds Frank on the ground beside his carefully tended garden—and their lives change in an instant. As Frank's physical condition worsens, and his mental acuity and mood deteriorate, Wendell faces the dual pressure of caring for a stubborn, physically incapacitated old man, and watching the love of his life decline.
They say that growing old isn't for the faint of heart, and watching the health of the person you love go downhill is tremendously difficult. Hide so beautifully captures the feelings of regret and loss, of anger and frustration, the split-second thoughts that you might be better off if they were no longer suffering. But this story is also moving because of the lives that Wendell and Frank had to live, the measures they took to avoid discovery, the sacrifices they had to make.
Griffin perfectly occupies the voices and mannerisms of his characters. While there were times that the story moved a little slower than I would have liked, I couldn't stop reading, even as I dreaded where the book might end. Hide is a moving tribute to love, and a salute to the sacrifices made by those who came before us, so we can live the lives everyone deserves to, loving the person we choose.
See all of my reviews at http://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blo....
Full disclosure: I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review. Many thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury USA for making it available!
Poignant, beautiful, and moving, Matthew Griffin's Hide is a powerful love story that you don't often see depicted in movies, books, or television shows, but it is truly resonant and relevant.
It isn't long after World War II when Frank, returning home from military service, meets Wendell, a shy, taciturn taxidermist, in a rural North Carolina town. At this time in society, relationships such as theirs could mean being ostracized from their families, losing their jobs, shock treatments or institutionalization, going to jail, even losing their lives. But the two are drawn to each other, and decide to move into a house on the outskirts of town, where other than going to work each day they keep to themselves.
It's a solitary existence and a life filled with the fear of discovery, but their love endures for more than 50 years. And then one day, Wendell finds Frank on the ground beside his carefully tended garden—and their lives change in an instant. As Frank's physical condition worsens, and his mental acuity and mood deteriorate, Wendell faces the dual pressure of caring for a stubborn, physically incapacitated old man, and watching the love of his life decline.
They say that growing old isn't for the faint of heart, and watching the health of the person you love go downhill is tremendously difficult. Hide so beautifully captures the feelings of regret and loss, of anger and frustration, the split-second thoughts that you might be better off if they were no longer suffering. But this story is also moving because of the lives that Wendell and Frank had to live, the measures they took to avoid discovery, the sacrifices they had to make.
Griffin perfectly occupies the voices and mannerisms of his characters. While there were times that the story moved a little slower than I would have liked, I couldn't stop reading, even as I dreaded where the book might end. Hide is a moving tribute to love, and a salute to the sacrifices made by those who came before us, so we can live the lives everyone deserves to, loving the person we choose.
See all of my reviews at http://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blo....
December 27, 2015
Well, I had read about half of this hoping it would get better. Truth is, I was bored due to endless mundane descriptions. While I was interested in these two men, and what a life lived in secrecy must be like, I never felt connected to either of them. Maybe one of the characters profession as a taxidermist played a part? I don't know, but I just found myself uninterested. I decided to continue reading as there were such controversial views that I wanted to see for myself. I'm really glad a reviewer warned me about a horrendous animal scene. I guess knowing what was coming helped, but I must say if I didn't, I would have freaked. The book went from boring to horrific. The last 20 or so pages held my attention as it was the only time the characters got honest with each other. It's very sad these two men had to distance themselves from everyone, and I would have liked to know more of what that felt like. Just wasn't for me.
July 9, 2016
4.5 Stars
After World War II Frank returns home from military service to his rural North Carolina town. It isn’t long before he meets Wendell, a shy, reserved taxidermist, in a rural North Carolina town. With few words said, and only eye contact made, they find they are drawn to each other. With few words said they find love.
Due to the “climate” of the times, they were forced to live in fear and isolation or face the legal consequences of being gay in a decidedly anti-gay world, living in fear of even the silent accusatory eyes.
“When those men were arrested, it was for crimes against nature, as though they’d been caught kicking up a public flower bed. That’s how truly unspeakable it was: we didn’t have the words.”
They take precautions.
“We never wrote each other love letters, anything someone might find, and he never came to my shop at the same time two days in a row, or by the same path through the downtown streets and alleys.”
When Frank’s mother passes away, he longs to be away from all these prying eyes, from the gossip, the potential to bring dishonor to the good name of his family. To be with Wendell, he sells his mother’s house, which he loves, and buys a place on the far outskirts of town, the kind of place where you only go if you live there. So isolated that the rest of the world falls away. Out of the eyes of others.
As a child, Wendell was overly emotional, perhaps, felt things deeply. The beauty of life, of the everyday. A sensitive, easily moved child.
“…as a boy, I’d felt the passage of time with an acute pain, nostalgic for afternoons when I was happy, for beautiful spring evenings full of warm, wild wind, before they were even over, so that I’d start to cry in the middle of running through the grass with my cousins because I knew it would be over so soon.”
Time passes, as it has a habit of doing, until one day when Wendell finds Frank, who is now eighty-three lying beside his beloved garden.
A stroke. Rehabilitation. Physical changes. Mental changes, dementia changes everything. And life changes.
The one thing that doesn’t change, that is with them always: The Fear of being discovered.
There’s much of this book that one could read as repetitive, mundane, the cycle of the life of one elderly person caring for another elderly person within the confines of four walls. Trying to determine the wants of a person whose mind isn’t capable of making a decision that is based on anything, let alone lasts for the time needed to procure that object they so desire in that moment. There’s a dog, Daisy, that comes to live with them after Frank’s stroke, and the routine is momentarily broken. Routine is tedious – not just in this story. I felt this was needed to show the buildup of frustrations, resentment even at times, when your day is filled with caring for someone who doesn’t even always know who you are, let alone what year it is, where the dog came from or where is an appropriate receptacle for human waste. If it’s frustrating to spend an hour or two reading about essentially living the same type of day over and over, be assured it is nothing like living that life.
The dog meets with an untimely death. I skipped a page of the descriptions that followed because I just couldn’t. I was struck by Wendell’s gentle nature when he tenderly holds onto the dog as she lets go of this world, very touching.
While the dog was a gift to Frank to give him a reason to get his self-wallowing behind out of bed, Wendell’s love for all animals is strong in general. For their dog, who had brought some light and love to their household, Wendell’s heart was breaking. He sees one life end, knowing another isn’t too far behind.
Quiet, persuasive reflections on life, on a life - with all the human foibles and infirmities. Commitment. The grace of living is brought about with sacrifice, giving of ourselves when it’s not always easy. We may be close to perfect when we first get here, but how far we fall before we leave.
July 1, 2023
Up until page 202, I was thinking this was a solid 3, maybe even a 4 star book - but (no spoilers) something happens on that page from which the novel never recovers... and I could barely make it through the next ten pages, which details the intricacies of taxidermy in more detail than I ever wanted to know. Plus, in retrospect, the description of the book is extremely misleading - I was expecting something along the lines of 'Brokeback Mountain', a story of a love that couldn't exist openly ... and what I got was 'Still Alice: Gay Edition' - the gay element is almost superfluous, and the book is an unrelenting nightmare of what it means to care for someone suffering the effects of a stroke and dementia. Since I am myself a caretaker, this was probably the LAST book I needed to read.
January 1, 2016
Quiet, powerful and moving. A very real look at the quiet desperation of aging and loss; the pain and distortion of a life spent in hiding in a world before two men in a small town could live openly. This will stick with me for a long, long time.
June 4, 2023
Wow! This hit me hard!! I read most of this book with tears in my eyes.
I didn't expect this book to move me as much as it did! This love story follows Wendall and Frank, relationship from post-war youth to frail old age.
A beautiful and tragic but stunning read.
I didn't expect this book to move me as much as it did! This love story follows Wendall and Frank, relationship from post-war youth to frail old age.
A beautiful and tragic but stunning read.
May 3, 2016
I abandoned this horrific novel at page 212 (of 252), unable to continue without actually vomiting up my lunch, which I rashly was eating while reading Matthew Griffin's disgusting first book. Maybe you will like it. I didn't.
It began well enough. In the first few chapters I was pleased to hear from a new voice in the literary gay fiction genre, and a note I took at the time for this review says: "A joy reading new fiction from a young author in which a cell phone doesn't appear essentially as a character in itself, and where people communicate using the English language instead of stupid abbreviated text messages, and where there are real, ugly, older people, not idealized gods."
That euphoria didn't last long. Soon after, I noted this: "Flat and monotonic tone, surrounding some gruesome imagery."
Then the text exploded into pure grotesqueness. My final unedited note before abandoning the book, please bear with me, it's long and raw, reads: "Horrific. Several chapters can be skipped totally without loss (like in some of DFW's work.) Those treating the gory details of taxidermy—and I mean all the details, drenched in blood and gore, and the most unbelievably unsexy 'romantic' scene where the lovers for the first time hold each other's slime-covered hands immersed deeply within the abdominal cavity of a rotting, dead animal. After that nausea eased, I had to read minuscule details about dentures ill-fitted into empty sockets in jaws, with his breath smelling like a sewer, and someone using pliers to extract a partial dental bridge put in the wrong hole. Oh my god...there's saliva dripping from most chapters, if not from every page... Dog shit gets tracked all over the house. A putrefied, partially liquified, dead infant stuffed into a black trash bag, killed by its mother for crying too much, cooked in the summer heat for several weeks, its little hand sticking out. The worst, I suppose, is a spoiler: I couldn't make this stuff up! A LOVE STORY? ENOUGH ALREADY!!!!"
Sorry about that run-on paragraph. In this case, the original, virgin thoughts are most representative of what the reader must suffer through. Did you notice the part about the dead infant? We are not spared reading how its sun-cooked body literally leaks out of that trash bag. Nice. Real nice. And to no discernible legitimate narrative purpose.
Funny how none of that gratuitous gore is mentioned in the publisher's book description, nor in any online review I've read. How any of it is necessarily germane to the story boggles the intelligent mind.
Keep in mind this is NOT a book in the horror, gothic male romance, or terror genres: it is supposed to be an uplifting love story. Let's read the blurb that famed author Edmund White, whom I admire greatly, has written on the dust jacket: "Tender, restrained, Hide is the freshly imagined story of a gay couple who decide to give up the world--friends, family, career--in order to live out their forbidden love in the decades before gay liberation. This is a great love story." [I bolded the text.]
Did White read the same book as I did? I notice he has blurbed two or three novels lately, maybe he got them mixed up. Whatever the case, a love story this is not. Rather, it is a seriously flawed look at the psychoses caused by societal isolation. James Purdy captured this theme, and the violence and horror caused by it, often auxiliary to some male same-sex relationships, much better in Narrow Rooms and Eustace Chisholm and the Works: A Novel.
In his blurb, White's use of the word "restrained" is laughable. One is again forced to the conclusion that he never read the book! No one would ever think that Griffin's book is restrained! As an author, he never shies from putting whatever he feels like on the page, as I have shown above. Beyond the unabashed gore, uncomfortable aspects of biological living, eating, defecating, etc., are shamelessly included. That's completely acceptable, treated in a literary way, but restrained it's not.
Surprisingly, the one area where some lessening of the fierce onslaught of reality does occur, is regarding sex. Strangely there is almost none. Only one short, three-line paragraph refers to the experiential joy of male-male sex. That's it, folks. There's no more, demonstrating that this is not a work of the male romance genre, nor was it expected to be.
White's blurb at least seems to have been written for a particular book, if not Hide then perhaps something similar. But here is another one from the dust jacket, by Justin Torres, writer of We the Animals. It's a good example of a publisher using a reviewer to obscure a book's real content, in order to not limit its sales: "Some love, pressured by time, and isolation, and prejudice, turns hard, gem-like, buried in protective rock. In Hide, Matthew Griffin has used his considerable talents to cut into and polish the gemstone, allowing us a glimpse at a remarkable love, a costly love, meanly sparkling, and precious."
What a sentence! For fun, try reading it aloud and get it to sound right. Its poetic, comma-separated obscurity must surely mean that the book to which it refers must be great! But, come on Justin, isn't this really a precious line of prose from your next book which you are trying on for size here? Certainly it has nothing to with the book in question by Matthew Griffin. Change the names and we have an all-purpose blurb useful for any book at all, but regretfully parseable by few potential readers.
Oh, and Justin did you not read those distinctly "unprecious" parts about the dead baby and the eviscerated dog? Maybe you skipped over them like it seems most reviewers have. I would have liked to have had your professional assessment of those parts before choosing whether to purchase this book, instead of some meaningless cover copy. The same, and more, goes for most of the glowing 5-star reviews on Goodreads: worthless due to their omissions.
Given my extremely negative, visceral reaction to this book, which in all fairness was unnecessarily forced by the author, I won't review its LGBT content and meaning. Someone also should write a criticism of its ageism, which, despite the young author's nearly unique and heroic effort to treat older gay men sympathetically, sadly failed. Nor will I mention its admirable treatment of the tragedy of age-related dementia.
My silence on these aspects might be partially remedied---and nothing speaks more eloquently about the book's particular positive merits, and indeed the value of Goodreads itself as a momentous institution---by reading a popular GR member's review, which can be found here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show.... Be sure to scan the multiplicity of comments, too. Especially those. Ideally before buying this book.
I agree with Torres that Griffin has considerable talents, but in his first novel he squandered them on creating repellent scenes of far-too-real repugnance instead of intelligent, penetrating fiction. Can anyone tell me why new authors, even when trained at the famous Iowa Writers' Workshop, write this kind of crap instead of using their envied abilities to create something that doesn't make us retch up our lunch or drown us in a flood of tears?
It began well enough. In the first few chapters I was pleased to hear from a new voice in the literary gay fiction genre, and a note I took at the time for this review says: "A joy reading new fiction from a young author in which a cell phone doesn't appear essentially as a character in itself, and where people communicate using the English language instead of stupid abbreviated text messages, and where there are real, ugly, older people, not idealized gods."
That euphoria didn't last long. Soon after, I noted this: "Flat and monotonic tone, surrounding some gruesome imagery."
Then the text exploded into pure grotesqueness. My final unedited note before abandoning the book, please bear with me, it's long and raw, reads: "Horrific. Several chapters can be skipped totally without loss (like in some of DFW's work.) Those treating the gory details of taxidermy—and I mean all the details, drenched in blood and gore, and the most unbelievably unsexy 'romantic' scene where the lovers for the first time hold each other's slime-covered hands immersed deeply within the abdominal cavity of a rotting, dead animal. After that nausea eased, I had to read minuscule details about dentures ill-fitted into empty sockets in jaws, with his breath smelling like a sewer, and someone using pliers to extract a partial dental bridge put in the wrong hole. Oh my god...there's saliva dripping from most chapters, if not from every page... Dog shit gets tracked all over the house. A putrefied, partially liquified, dead infant stuffed into a black trash bag, killed by its mother for crying too much, cooked in the summer heat for several weeks, its little hand sticking out. The worst, I suppose, is a spoiler: I couldn't make this stuff up! A LOVE STORY? ENOUGH ALREADY!!!!"
Sorry about that run-on paragraph. In this case, the original, virgin thoughts are most representative of what the reader must suffer through. Did you notice the part about the dead infant? We are not spared reading how its sun-cooked body literally leaks out of that trash bag. Nice. Real nice. And to no discernible legitimate narrative purpose.
Funny how none of that gratuitous gore is mentioned in the publisher's book description, nor in any online review I've read. How any of it is necessarily germane to the story boggles the intelligent mind.
Keep in mind this is NOT a book in the horror, gothic male romance, or terror genres: it is supposed to be an uplifting love story. Let's read the blurb that famed author Edmund White, whom I admire greatly, has written on the dust jacket: "Tender, restrained, Hide is the freshly imagined story of a gay couple who decide to give up the world--friends, family, career--in order to live out their forbidden love in the decades before gay liberation. This is a great love story." [I bolded the text.]
Did White read the same book as I did? I notice he has blurbed two or three novels lately, maybe he got them mixed up. Whatever the case, a love story this is not. Rather, it is a seriously flawed look at the psychoses caused by societal isolation. James Purdy captured this theme, and the violence and horror caused by it, often auxiliary to some male same-sex relationships, much better in Narrow Rooms and Eustace Chisholm and the Works: A Novel.
In his blurb, White's use of the word "restrained" is laughable. One is again forced to the conclusion that he never read the book! No one would ever think that Griffin's book is restrained! As an author, he never shies from putting whatever he feels like on the page, as I have shown above. Beyond the unabashed gore, uncomfortable aspects of biological living, eating, defecating, etc., are shamelessly included. That's completely acceptable, treated in a literary way, but restrained it's not.
Surprisingly, the one area where some lessening of the fierce onslaught of reality does occur, is regarding sex. Strangely there is almost none. Only one short, three-line paragraph refers to the experiential joy of male-male sex. That's it, folks. There's no more, demonstrating that this is not a work of the male romance genre, nor was it expected to be.
White's blurb at least seems to have been written for a particular book, if not Hide then perhaps something similar. But here is another one from the dust jacket, by Justin Torres, writer of We the Animals. It's a good example of a publisher using a reviewer to obscure a book's real content, in order to not limit its sales: "Some love, pressured by time, and isolation, and prejudice, turns hard, gem-like, buried in protective rock. In Hide, Matthew Griffin has used his considerable talents to cut into and polish the gemstone, allowing us a glimpse at a remarkable love, a costly love, meanly sparkling, and precious."
What a sentence! For fun, try reading it aloud and get it to sound right. Its poetic, comma-separated obscurity must surely mean that the book to which it refers must be great! But, come on Justin, isn't this really a precious line of prose from your next book which you are trying on for size here? Certainly it has nothing to with the book in question by Matthew Griffin. Change the names and we have an all-purpose blurb useful for any book at all, but regretfully parseable by few potential readers.
Oh, and Justin did you not read those distinctly "unprecious" parts about the dead baby and the eviscerated dog? Maybe you skipped over them like it seems most reviewers have. I would have liked to have had your professional assessment of those parts before choosing whether to purchase this book, instead of some meaningless cover copy. The same, and more, goes for most of the glowing 5-star reviews on Goodreads: worthless due to their omissions.
Given my extremely negative, visceral reaction to this book, which in all fairness was unnecessarily forced by the author, I won't review its LGBT content and meaning. Someone also should write a criticism of its ageism, which, despite the young author's nearly unique and heroic effort to treat older gay men sympathetically, sadly failed. Nor will I mention its admirable treatment of the tragedy of age-related dementia.
My silence on these aspects might be partially remedied---and nothing speaks more eloquently about the book's particular positive merits, and indeed the value of Goodreads itself as a momentous institution---by reading a popular GR member's review, which can be found here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show.... Be sure to scan the multiplicity of comments, too. Especially those. Ideally before buying this book.
I agree with Torres that Griffin has considerable talents, but in his first novel he squandered them on creating repellent scenes of far-too-real repugnance instead of intelligent, penetrating fiction. Can anyone tell me why new authors, even when trained at the famous Iowa Writers' Workshop, write this kind of crap instead of using their envied abilities to create something that doesn't make us retch up our lunch or drown us in a flood of tears?
June 23, 2016
Hide by Matthew Griffin
This is my favorite book that I have read since 2002. I don't think my review can do the book enough justice. Matthew Griffin is a graduate of the Iowa's Writers workshop and the humanity of his writing really reflects his training there. And the love and humanity shines through like the brightest diamond in his magnificent work with his novel Hide.
It took me one sitting to read this because I simply could not part with the beautiful prose of this tender story. It takes place after World War Two when Wendell and Frank first meet and moves back and forth to the present. They truly have to "hide" their relationship from everybody they know because of the law about homosexuality if proven could lead from incarceration to castration. Yet, their feelings for each other lead them to forgo family relationships and living in obscurity so they can be together.
The book is about what commitment to another sometimes entails us to make great sacrifices. They both love animals so purely. One of them is a taxidermist. There is one brutal scene about a horrific accident with an animal, but it is an accident. That scene might offend readers. It was not done to the pet intentionally.
It is about how we endure when we all inevitably age and what it means to take care of each other. This book touched me deeply on so many levels about what it means to be human. I still think about this book everyday. I will reread it again for its moving examples of pure humanity and love. This is one book I am recommending to everybody. I would rate this book 100 stars, if I could.
.
This is my favorite book that I have read since 2002. I don't think my review can do the book enough justice. Matthew Griffin is a graduate of the Iowa's Writers workshop and the humanity of his writing really reflects his training there. And the love and humanity shines through like the brightest diamond in his magnificent work with his novel Hide.
It took me one sitting to read this because I simply could not part with the beautiful prose of this tender story. It takes place after World War Two when Wendell and Frank first meet and moves back and forth to the present. They truly have to "hide" their relationship from everybody they know because of the law about homosexuality if proven could lead from incarceration to castration. Yet, their feelings for each other lead them to forgo family relationships and living in obscurity so they can be together.
The book is about what commitment to another sometimes entails us to make great sacrifices. They both love animals so purely. One of them is a taxidermist. There is one brutal scene about a horrific accident with an animal, but it is an accident. That scene might offend readers. It was not done to the pet intentionally.
It is about how we endure when we all inevitably age and what it means to take care of each other. This book touched me deeply on so many levels about what it means to be human. I still think about this book everyday. I will reread it again for its moving examples of pure humanity and love. This is one book I am recommending to everybody. I would rate this book 100 stars, if I could.
.
December 1, 2015
Wow! A powerful story about caregiving and dementia. The setting oscillates between present time and shortly after World War II. A fifty year love-filled relationship between two men. It would be a pretty boring story if it was a heterosexual couple. It is somewhat boring until about 80% through. Word of warning, do not read the last 20% of the book while getting a pedicure. If you're like me, you'll start sobbing uncontrollably.
The story was a good compliment to a diversity training I just went through where the professor distributed a timeline describing events someone would have lived through if you were born gay in the 1930s.
An amazingly well written book. Thank you NetGalley for this opportunity.
The story was a good compliment to a diversity training I just went through where the professor distributed a timeline describing events someone would have lived through if you were born gay in the 1930s.
An amazingly well written book. Thank you NetGalley for this opportunity.
December 3, 2015
I have to be honest: I feel hesitant about posting this review. Why? For two reasons, the first being that I wasn't able to finish this book and the second being that I feel bad for not liking this novel.
As with any other book I entered Mathew Griffin's debut novel with an open mind. The premise seemed interesting and I was ready to give my heart to Frank and Wendell, whose love had kept them together for a bit over five decades. However, I was about fifty pages in and I felt no connection to any aspect of the book.
Frank seemed like the most stubborn old person with no redeeming qualities. The story is told from Wendell's point of view and I struggled to find why he loved Frank, most of the time it was just Wendell looking after Frank and doing things for him that he was too stubborn to do. This novel uses two different perspectives in the form of alternating chapters to tell the current situation and how the two met. I thought I'd find a connection when I read about how they fell in love but instead I was disappointed, I didn't feel like there was a story to tell.
There's a lot of descriptions of mundane everyday things. The kind of things that grandparents drone on about but you listen to because you love them and you care about what they want to share with you. But because I was never given a reason to love and care about Frank and Wendell, these descriptions bored me (a scene that comes to mind is Wendell describing how he had to wash a knife twice because the first time the food didn't come off it all the way).
At the end of chapter 7 (around page 70), I realized I couldn't finish this novel. The only thing I liked about this novel was the gorgeous cover art. I really do wish I could have enjoyed it as much as others seem to.
As with any other book I entered Mathew Griffin's debut novel with an open mind. The premise seemed interesting and I was ready to give my heart to Frank and Wendell, whose love had kept them together for a bit over five decades. However, I was about fifty pages in and I felt no connection to any aspect of the book.
Frank seemed like the most stubborn old person with no redeeming qualities. The story is told from Wendell's point of view and I struggled to find why he loved Frank, most of the time it was just Wendell looking after Frank and doing things for him that he was too stubborn to do. This novel uses two different perspectives in the form of alternating chapters to tell the current situation and how the two met. I thought I'd find a connection when I read about how they fell in love but instead I was disappointed, I didn't feel like there was a story to tell.
There's a lot of descriptions of mundane everyday things. The kind of things that grandparents drone on about but you listen to because you love them and you care about what they want to share with you. But because I was never given a reason to love and care about Frank and Wendell, these descriptions bored me (a scene that comes to mind is Wendell describing how he had to wash a knife twice because the first time the food didn't come off it all the way).
At the end of chapter 7 (around page 70), I realized I couldn't finish this novel. The only thing I liked about this novel was the gorgeous cover art. I really do wish I could have enjoyed it as much as others seem to.
March 27, 2022
Overwritten with few moments that stood out to me with beautiful writing. I just wish this had less description of trivial things and more exploration of their past relationship.
July 4, 2017
Wendell Wilson, a taxidermist, and Frank Clifton, a veteran, meet after the end of the Second World War. It is a time when such love holds real danger. Severing nearly all ties with the rest of the world, they create a home for themselves, and for decade the routine of self-reliant domesticity seems to protect them.
But when Wendell finds Frank lying motionless outside at the age of eighty-three, their life together begins to unravel. As frank's memory deteriorates, Wendell must come to terms with the consequences and sacrifices of half a century of seclusion: the different lives they might have lived - and the impending, inexorable loss of the one they had.
Matthew Griffin has a beautiful writing style and describes characters and settings so well! This combined with his unique and original love story and you have the depressing, beautiful book that is Hide. What impressed me the most was the fact that the author has never been an 80 year old with dementia, nor an 80 year old looking after an 80 year old with dementia, nor been secluded for more than 50 years, yet he writes the story as if he has. The emotion he puts into all of his words was so convincing, it was almost too overwhelmingly sad to read!
This book is honest, and doesn't shy away from the gory details of growing old and struggling with sickness and memory loss. For those who have read Still Alice, the long descriptions of how it feels to slowly loose everything you know should be familiar, except this books adds in the forbidden romance and explored how it feels to go through such a tough experience alone, which makes it even harder to bear.
Fair warning, there isn't a lot of happiness in this novel, nor is there a particularly happy ending for all the characters in the story (those who fear the death of animals or don't like reading a very descriptive page on struggling to put in another's dentures, beware!), but there is no denying that this is a tale that needs to be told, and it's definitely worth the read if you've got the guts!
But when Wendell finds Frank lying motionless outside at the age of eighty-three, their life together begins to unravel. As frank's memory deteriorates, Wendell must come to terms with the consequences and sacrifices of half a century of seclusion: the different lives they might have lived - and the impending, inexorable loss of the one they had.
Matthew Griffin has a beautiful writing style and describes characters and settings so well! This combined with his unique and original love story and you have the depressing, beautiful book that is Hide. What impressed me the most was the fact that the author has never been an 80 year old with dementia, nor an 80 year old looking after an 80 year old with dementia, nor been secluded for more than 50 years, yet he writes the story as if he has. The emotion he puts into all of his words was so convincing, it was almost too overwhelmingly sad to read!
This book is honest, and doesn't shy away from the gory details of growing old and struggling with sickness and memory loss. For those who have read Still Alice, the long descriptions of how it feels to slowly loose everything you know should be familiar, except this books adds in the forbidden romance and explored how it feels to go through such a tough experience alone, which makes it even harder to bear.
Fair warning, there isn't a lot of happiness in this novel, nor is there a particularly happy ending for all the characters in the story (those who fear the death of animals or don't like reading a very descriptive page on struggling to put in another's dentures, beware!), but there is no denying that this is a tale that needs to be told, and it's definitely worth the read if you've got the guts!
August 27, 2016
Matthew Griffin's beautiful debut novel “Hide” tells a story that I hungered for as a teen: a layered and nuanced lifelong romance between two men. But this is more than simply a gay romance; it's a novel about how love transforms over large stretches of time and the different roles partners play during difficult periods of life.
Frank and Wendell meet after WWII in North Carolina. Frank served in the war and Wendell works as a taxidermist. Amidst their burgeoning romance within a small community, they are aware of the dangerous consequences if they were to be open about their feelings for each other. Instead of risking familial rejection, public condemnation, possible imprisonment and/or psychiatric institutionalization they choose to retreat to an extremely isolated house in the country and never allow anyone to know that they are together. When they must be seen together they pretend to be brothers. An incident like the occurs at the novel's beginning when Frank who is in his eighties collapses in their garden from heart trouble. Told from Wendell's perspective, we see over the course of the novel the heart-wrenching struggle as Frank continues to deteriorate both mentally and physically. Interspersed with the increasing strain of their daily lives are accounts of their relationship over the decades and the sacrifices they've made isolating themselves from the rest of society.
Read my full review of Hide by Matthew Griffin on LonesomeReader
Frank and Wendell meet after WWII in North Carolina. Frank served in the war and Wendell works as a taxidermist. Amidst their burgeoning romance within a small community, they are aware of the dangerous consequences if they were to be open about their feelings for each other. Instead of risking familial rejection, public condemnation, possible imprisonment and/or psychiatric institutionalization they choose to retreat to an extremely isolated house in the country and never allow anyone to know that they are together. When they must be seen together they pretend to be brothers. An incident like the occurs at the novel's beginning when Frank who is in his eighties collapses in their garden from heart trouble. Told from Wendell's perspective, we see over the course of the novel the heart-wrenching struggle as Frank continues to deteriorate both mentally and physically. Interspersed with the increasing strain of their daily lives are accounts of their relationship over the decades and the sacrifices they've made isolating themselves from the rest of society.
Read my full review of Hide by Matthew Griffin on LonesomeReader
December 19, 2016
The best gay novel I've read in many a year, capturing in perfect prose the confines of the closet and the love that, however distorted, grew there between two southern men from just after WWII to the present, them barely giving a nod to - barely breathing the slightest bit easier after - Stonewall or anything that followed. It's also a moving depiction of aging. A marvelous debut.
Readers squeamish about taxidermy or a graphic description of the accidental violent death of a pet might want to consider skipping this one, though.
Readers squeamish about taxidermy or a graphic description of the accidental violent death of a pet might want to consider skipping this one, though.
July 23, 2022
it's been like three weeks since i've read this and i'm still thinking about it. obsessed with the nature imagery, the taxidermy bits were so visceral and so good and they fit with the narrative so well. personally, i found the experience of dealing with dementia hugely relatable, it both sent me spiralling and felt oddly comforting. don't read if you don't like bad things happening to dogs tho :(
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 17, 2016
A lusciously written novel about an aging homosexual couple, Frank Clifton and Wendell Wilson, who have been together for sixty years and have had to hide their relationship from society, their local community, and family. The story goes back and forth between the time when Frank and Wendell met and fell in love to current time when Frank (83) has a stroke and his health slowly declines. Griffin does an excellent job of slowly unfolding the story and pulling at the sentimental heart strings of the reader.
Wendell tries to keep their remotely located house functioning while caring for Frank. Wendell grieves the slow loss and demise of Frank. To cheer Frank up, Wendell adopts a beagle, Daisy, from the animal shelter. Frank and Daisy immediately bond. There are some hilarious scenes of their interaction and relationship to which Wendell is incensed, humored and appalled. Daisy meets her demise at the blade of the lawnmower. Frank is oblivious to what has happened and Wendell is shattered. Wendell is a taxidermist and is heartbroken over Daisy's death. He lovingly ages her tissues to create a lifeless and lifelong Daisy. To me, this tender act, portrayed Wendell's overall sadness of the private and isolated life he and Frank lived for sixty years. Frank was dying and Daisy died. Everything Wendell knew and loved was coming to an end. They were two isolated aging homosexual partners who could not ever reveal their relationship to the outside world.
At times I thought Wendell was going to lose his mind caring for Frank. There is a parallel news story of Debbie Drowner, a downtrodden mother, who drowned her son, Little Larry, because he wouldn't stop crying. She carried him in her car trunk for a week before confessing to the crime and location of Larry's remains. Wendell follows the story and explains the decomposition of Larry's corpse with the passage of time and heat in the truck. At times I wondered if this was going to be a psychological thriller.
But it was not. It is simply a story of love, the passage of time, and seeing one's loved one age and slip away before your eyes. This story was beautifully written. Griffin has a gift and he touched my heart.
Wendell tries to keep their remotely located house functioning while caring for Frank. Wendell grieves the slow loss and demise of Frank. To cheer Frank up, Wendell adopts a beagle, Daisy, from the animal shelter. Frank and Daisy immediately bond. There are some hilarious scenes of their interaction and relationship to which Wendell is incensed, humored and appalled. Daisy meets her demise at the blade of the lawnmower. Frank is oblivious to what has happened and Wendell is shattered. Wendell is a taxidermist and is heartbroken over Daisy's death. He lovingly ages her tissues to create a lifeless and lifelong Daisy. To me, this tender act, portrayed Wendell's overall sadness of the private and isolated life he and Frank lived for sixty years. Frank was dying and Daisy died. Everything Wendell knew and loved was coming to an end. They were two isolated aging homosexual partners who could not ever reveal their relationship to the outside world.
At times I thought Wendell was going to lose his mind caring for Frank. There is a parallel news story of Debbie Drowner, a downtrodden mother, who drowned her son, Little Larry, because he wouldn't stop crying. She carried him in her car trunk for a week before confessing to the crime and location of Larry's remains. Wendell follows the story and explains the decomposition of Larry's corpse with the passage of time and heat in the truck. At times I wondered if this was going to be a psychological thriller.
But it was not. It is simply a story of love, the passage of time, and seeing one's loved one age and slip away before your eyes. This story was beautifully written. Griffin has a gift and he touched my heart.
May 17, 2016
I'm having a hard time putting into words how much this book meant to me. It's everything I'd want out of a literary fiction novel, even though yes it is slow moving, verbose, and incredibly descriptive of every detail, as many reviewers here have noted. It's got beautiful prose, authentic dialogue, real and flawed characters. It reads like a memoir.
I definitely laughed out loud at certain points, and cried more than once. I reread certain paragraphs or pages several times, because they were so perfect. This is the kind of book I'm always looking for, so I'm very thankful to have found it.
There is a scene that put some people off this book entirely, involving an animal and a lawnmower, but it's not even as bad as a true story my husband told me about his youth.. So maybe that's why I could stomach it. Real life is gross. Things happen.
I also wasn't at all bothered by the vivid descriptions of taxidermy, I found it fascinating. But I can see how some people were bothered by it. We all have our limits. Like I personally can't tolerate scenes where people are having sex in public bathrooms, it's so unsanitary that it makes me feel physically ill to read such things.. Yet, it's extremely popular in erotica anthologies for some strange reason. I'm happy there wasn't any public bathroom sex in this book.
I found this book so shockingly honest at some times. Maybe because I'm the stay-at-home mother of a three year old. The narrator says some stuff that a lot of us think to ourselves when our entire lives revolve around caring for another person, one who is sometimes uncooperative, rebellious, non-communicative, and smelly. He says the things most of us never say out loud or even admit to ourselves, though. And what makes it more poignant is how these struggles are woven between memories of when they were lovers and equals, before this man he spent his life with regressed to bratty childlike behavior and dependency. It was refreshing to read something so honest for once.
This is the author's first novel, but hopefully not their last. I'd gladly read anything they wrote.
I definitely laughed out loud at certain points, and cried more than once. I reread certain paragraphs or pages several times, because they were so perfect. This is the kind of book I'm always looking for, so I'm very thankful to have found it.
There is a scene that put some people off this book entirely, involving an animal and a lawnmower, but it's not even as bad as a true story my husband told me about his youth.. So maybe that's why I could stomach it. Real life is gross. Things happen.
I also wasn't at all bothered by the vivid descriptions of taxidermy, I found it fascinating. But I can see how some people were bothered by it. We all have our limits. Like I personally can't tolerate scenes where people are having sex in public bathrooms, it's so unsanitary that it makes me feel physically ill to read such things.. Yet, it's extremely popular in erotica anthologies for some strange reason. I'm happy there wasn't any public bathroom sex in this book.
I found this book so shockingly honest at some times. Maybe because I'm the stay-at-home mother of a three year old. The narrator says some stuff that a lot of us think to ourselves when our entire lives revolve around caring for another person, one who is sometimes uncooperative, rebellious, non-communicative, and smelly. He says the things most of us never say out loud or even admit to ourselves, though. And what makes it more poignant is how these struggles are woven between memories of when they were lovers and equals, before this man he spent his life with regressed to bratty childlike behavior and dependency. It was refreshing to read something so honest for once.
This is the author's first novel, but hopefully not their last. I'd gladly read anything they wrote.
October 15, 2015
I was fortunate to receive a pre-pub copy of Hide. Matthew Griffin's debut novel is an honest, realistic look into the lives of of two men in love. Griffin reminds us in our 2015 marriage equality world that not so long ago, gay couples had to hide their authentic selves if they were to carve out any kind of life with each other. Frank and Wendell abandon everything - literally to be together in a hostile post-WWII small Southern town. Does it damage them permanently? Yes. Was it worth it? The answer is also a resounding yes. If you've ever wondered if regular people make huge sacrifices to advance civil rights, this novel will answer that question. Hide chronicles the love story of the two young men and their twilight years together. The care they give each other is honest and unedited. Matthew Griffin has created a fascinating, raw story and a powerful tale of two men and the love they share despite having no support from the outside world.
November 1, 2015
(I received an ARC from NetGalley in response for an honest review.)
I'd actually rate this one 4.5 stars. But Goodreads won't let me.
I anticipate that this book will be touted closer to its release date and look forward to saying that I was lucky enough to read it before its publication date.
This novel reminded me of Still Alice in that it too is a haunting and devastating portrait of a slow death. But what makes it unique is that it is the story of a forbidden love between two men and about what happens when you literally have no one left. That their love thrived during a dangerous time is remarkable; the precautions they had to take in order so that it could flourish (and not pose any threats to their lives) are sad, deliberate, and fraught with anxiety. You know that there will be no happy ending for either of these men, but the story is so well written and carefully studded with subplots, metaphor, and motif that you can't look away.
I'd actually rate this one 4.5 stars. But Goodreads won't let me.
I anticipate that this book will be touted closer to its release date and look forward to saying that I was lucky enough to read it before its publication date.
This novel reminded me of Still Alice in that it too is a haunting and devastating portrait of a slow death. But what makes it unique is that it is the story of a forbidden love between two men and about what happens when you literally have no one left. That their love thrived during a dangerous time is remarkable; the precautions they had to take in order so that it could flourish (and not pose any threats to their lives) are sad, deliberate, and fraught with anxiety. You know that there will be no happy ending for either of these men, but the story is so well written and carefully studded with subplots, metaphor, and motif that you can't look away.
March 13, 2016
It is very refreshing to read a debut novel by a young gay man which is not about a young gay man living a fucked-up life in New York. It is about two old men nearing death together in North Carolina. It is often over-written and too polished the way workshopped novels at the Iowa Writers Workshop often are, but Griffin has talent. The fruitcake bit had me laughing. But there is no real story here, just a portrait that might have worked better as a short story, as in "One Came Over the Mountain." I thought D-Day, or little Larry, might have developed into something with real depth here, but they did not. The tragedies big and small in HIDE are seen coming miles away. That all said, I repeat I am grateful that this book is not the clichéd tale of New York every new gay writer somehow thinks he has to write to be taken seriously as authentically "gay." My favorite line? When Frank says: "I sometimes badly wanted to be part of the world."
June 26, 2020
A depressing, dull and meandering book that constantly throws things in for unnecessary "shock value" while failing to build any meaningful characterisation or plot.
On the surface, Hide is actually a fantastic concept for a novel. Following the lives of two gay men who must disguise their love and shared life from everyone in case they are arrested or even tortured due to their sexuality, you would think this novel would be full of secret longings, sweet memories and fully represent the fear and the rush of it all that would make hiding a romance both beautiful and painful in equal measure.
However, what we are given is two elderly men who both have very few redeeming qualities, moping about and barely seeming even like friends let alone individuals who have spent a whole life together in love. Add to this lots of very, very, very dull gardening descriptions and talk about tomatoes, passages about cleaning sinks and some pretty grim scenes of animal death and taxidermy, and you have to wonder what the point of this novel is at all.
I'm not one to be put off a novel by animal cruelty or anything like that as long as there is a reason for it occurring, something which Hide really fails to do. There's nothing artistic or profound about 30 pages of a dog being butchered by a lawnmower. And even the scene where the two men skin a deer together for the taxidermy process is dull and adds nothing - I have a sinking suspicion it was sort of meant to be sexy, and it really wasn't at all. I finished this novel knowing literally very little about these two men - so what was the point?
I will say that there are moments of beauty in this. Though I'm not a fan of the style or any of the plot, the last few pages were quite moving and nicely done - though the abrupt ending did also feel like the author had given up.
It may be a case of "it's not you, it's me", but this is a book I would very much struggle to recommend to anyone.
1.5 stars
On the surface, Hide is actually a fantastic concept for a novel. Following the lives of two gay men who must disguise their love and shared life from everyone in case they are arrested or even tortured due to their sexuality, you would think this novel would be full of secret longings, sweet memories and fully represent the fear and the rush of it all that would make hiding a romance both beautiful and painful in equal measure.
However, what we are given is two elderly men who both have very few redeeming qualities, moping about and barely seeming even like friends let alone individuals who have spent a whole life together in love. Add to this lots of very, very, very dull gardening descriptions and talk about tomatoes, passages about cleaning sinks and some pretty grim scenes of animal death and taxidermy, and you have to wonder what the point of this novel is at all.
I'm not one to be put off a novel by animal cruelty or anything like that as long as there is a reason for it occurring, something which Hide really fails to do. There's nothing artistic or profound about 30 pages of a dog being butchered by a lawnmower. And even the scene where the two men skin a deer together for the taxidermy process is dull and adds nothing - I have a sinking suspicion it was sort of meant to be sexy, and it really wasn't at all. I finished this novel knowing literally very little about these two men - so what was the point?
I will say that there are moments of beauty in this. Though I'm not a fan of the style or any of the plot, the last few pages were quite moving and nicely done - though the abrupt ending did also feel like the author had given up.
It may be a case of "it's not you, it's me", but this is a book I would very much struggle to recommend to anyone.
1.5 stars
March 12, 2016
This novel gave me everything I could ever want in a book. It was funny, sad, terrifying, disturbing, dramatic, over-the-top, and lovely all at the same time. As a gay man, this is the kind of love story I've been wanting to find for so long, and having just finished reading the narrative of Frank and Wendell's enduring relationship, I can finally say I've found it.
Matthew Griffin's prose is such a joy to read. There are so many sentences, paragraphs, even entire pages that felt nearly flawless to me. He has a way with words that not only tells a great story, but sets the atmosphere up in a way that makes you feel like you are there. I continuously reread phrases and paragraphs just because I was so in love with how they were constructed.
I am sure this book is not for everyone, as there are parts that are hard to read. Nevertheless, I felt like this was a book that was not a challenge to read. It was unexpected, and surprised me at times when I thought I had it all figured out. Griffin takes chances with his writing, all the while keeping it organized in a way that compliments the reading experience. Not to mention, he includes a sex scene that is the most beautiful way I've ever read sex being described, gay or straight.
This is a love story that is raw, realistic, and heartbreaking. There were many times throughout the book I felt overwhelmed by the story, both due to how it was written, and because of how it made me feel. I cried more than once, and felt it deeply enter into my consciousness. This is the kind of book that you won't ever forget, a book that you won't want to forget. I've already been recommending it to anyone who will listen to me. It really feels like a classic piece of literature that will stand the test of time. This is writing at its best.
Matthew Griffin's prose is such a joy to read. There are so many sentences, paragraphs, even entire pages that felt nearly flawless to me. He has a way with words that not only tells a great story, but sets the atmosphere up in a way that makes you feel like you are there. I continuously reread phrases and paragraphs just because I was so in love with how they were constructed.
I am sure this book is not for everyone, as there are parts that are hard to read. Nevertheless, I felt like this was a book that was not a challenge to read. It was unexpected, and surprised me at times when I thought I had it all figured out. Griffin takes chances with his writing, all the while keeping it organized in a way that compliments the reading experience. Not to mention, he includes a sex scene that is the most beautiful way I've ever read sex being described, gay or straight.
This is a love story that is raw, realistic, and heartbreaking. There were many times throughout the book I felt overwhelmed by the story, both due to how it was written, and because of how it made me feel. I cried more than once, and felt it deeply enter into my consciousness. This is the kind of book that you won't ever forget, a book that you won't want to forget. I've already been recommending it to anyone who will listen to me. It really feels like a classic piece of literature that will stand the test of time. This is writing at its best.
April 20, 2016
I stopped reading when the dog was mauled by the lawnmower.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 26, 2017
I don't think I would have discovered this book save for a mention on a podcast I listen to but it may be one of the highlights of my reading year.
The story is about two men who live together as a couple in a remote north Carolina house. The first chapter sees a dramatic opening as Frank collapses in his garden and is rushed into hospital. This event allows the story of their life and love together to emerge at the same time as we see the effects of a man's deterioration on his partner.
Their love has had to remain secret as it blossomed shortly after Frank came back from ww2 at a time when homosexuality was illegal and this leaves them isolated from family and society this has created a codependency on each other which allows some wonderfully written gentle but poignant bickering.
I'd really recommend this book as a book that transcends sexuality to give a lovely story of love and how it develops and changes over the years .
The story is about two men who live together as a couple in a remote north Carolina house. The first chapter sees a dramatic opening as Frank collapses in his garden and is rushed into hospital. This event allows the story of their life and love together to emerge at the same time as we see the effects of a man's deterioration on his partner.
Their love has had to remain secret as it blossomed shortly after Frank came back from ww2 at a time when homosexuality was illegal and this leaves them isolated from family and society this has created a codependency on each other which allows some wonderfully written gentle but poignant bickering.
I'd really recommend this book as a book that transcends sexuality to give a lovely story of love and how it develops and changes over the years .
March 14, 2016
This debut was so quietly poignant--it reminded me of some of my favorite indie movies that are so spare and seem to have no plot at all, but still leave you with gratitude that the story is being told. This book is not action-packed, or heavy on drama, or even completely heartbreaking or joyous, but it does paint a lovely portrait of two men trying to build a life together when it wasn't so easy for them to do just that. No huge twists, turns, or cliffhangers--but if you're looking for a smooth story that will poke (not stab) at your heart every couple chapters, I highly recommend it.
September 23, 2016
A beautiful, at times tender and heartbreaking love story. Two timelines run throughout portraying the secret love between Wendell and Frank when they first meet after WWII and sixty years later when Frank suffers a stroke and early stages of dementia. The consequences of keeping their illegal and forbidden love secret are keenly felt. Be warned - there is an incident involving on animal on page 202 that is truly shocking and didn't totally fit with the cosmology of the book. #hide
March 28, 2024
Thought provoking, made me feel sad for them. Good read.
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