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The Affliction
A man who can disappear; a woman who can see the future; a boy who kills his brother and loses the ability to speak; a man raised in a cult who now believes he is destined to die: The Affliction is a novel in stories that artfully weaves together the lives of its characters in ways both surprising and, in the end, inevitable. Diego Flores meets Ricardo Blanco, a damaged man who tells him about Javier Castillo, a man he once knew who could vanish into thin air. This sets into motion a chain of events that not only transforms Diego's life but that of many others.
- GenresFictionShort Stories
170 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 13, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
September 1, 2018
OK - one of our best poets just nailed one of the hardest feats of fiction - the linked short story collection. Dang, this is good. In a minimalist style with maximum impact, the big questions are asked and occasionally answered in this powerful collection. Check it out. For real!
July 14, 2018
The connections among the stories that comprise Affliction only gradually--even reluctantly--emerge. Even the narrator’s precise identity is withheld until about the last third of the book.
Once the links among the stories are revealed, however, the narrative converges toward an inevitable loss--much like a disease tends toward its end. There is a man suffering from leukemia who refuses to be treated with by medicine or by magic. There is a woman who asks a neighbor to read her future, only to learn of terrible impending loss. There is an orphaned archbishop who fathers children with nuns. There is the gay, unnamed narrator grappling with two lovers’ loss. A boy inadvertently murders his own brother. The author weaves each of these threads into a tight coil.
Written by the poet C. Dale Young (a personal favorite!), the tales focus on families from an unnamed island (perhaps Caribbean) that has been the crossroads of empires and thought at one time to be full of gold. The narrative is a frank embrace of dying magic: one of the families has over the centuries exhibited certain gifts (which are also sometimes afflictions): Reading (seeing the future), Healing, and instantaneous travel are the gifts featured here, but there are seven in total, some of which seem already to have died out by the time of this narrative.
Relatives of the gifted coax the gifts from unknowing toddlers who don’t understand their powers. The relatives acknowledge what they're feeling but shush them up. Occasionally, the gifted wish they were unafflicted, but when that actually (temporarily) happens, they know something is wrong with the world.
This ambivalence about the gifts is reflected also in the gay characters, who recognize in their desire both a blessing and a curse. Indeed, homosexuality is at one point expressly identified as an affliction, but certain of the characters love their unwanted love. This feels like an odd elegy for an erased magical people.
If the outcome is not surprising (death), the inevitability gives the narrative a certain momentum. All the same, The Affliction is not the swiftest read in the world. Occasionally, the pacing lags, even if the poet’s prose is always beautiful.
Once the links among the stories are revealed, however, the narrative converges toward an inevitable loss--much like a disease tends toward its end. There is a man suffering from leukemia who refuses to be treated with by medicine or by magic. There is a woman who asks a neighbor to read her future, only to learn of terrible impending loss. There is an orphaned archbishop who fathers children with nuns. There is the gay, unnamed narrator grappling with two lovers’ loss. A boy inadvertently murders his own brother. The author weaves each of these threads into a tight coil.
Written by the poet C. Dale Young (a personal favorite!), the tales focus on families from an unnamed island (perhaps Caribbean) that has been the crossroads of empires and thought at one time to be full of gold. The narrative is a frank embrace of dying magic: one of the families has over the centuries exhibited certain gifts (which are also sometimes afflictions): Reading (seeing the future), Healing, and instantaneous travel are the gifts featured here, but there are seven in total, some of which seem already to have died out by the time of this narrative.
Relatives of the gifted coax the gifts from unknowing toddlers who don’t understand their powers. The relatives acknowledge what they're feeling but shush them up. Occasionally, the gifted wish they were unafflicted, but when that actually (temporarily) happens, they know something is wrong with the world.
This ambivalence about the gifts is reflected also in the gay characters, who recognize in their desire both a blessing and a curse. Indeed, homosexuality is at one point expressly identified as an affliction, but certain of the characters love their unwanted love. This feels like an odd elegy for an erased magical people.
If the outcome is not surprising (death), the inevitability gives the narrative a certain momentum. All the same, The Affliction is not the swiftest read in the world. Occasionally, the pacing lags, even if the poet’s prose is always beautiful.
November 14, 2024
Once I finished this book and learned who the narrator was, I then re-read it for a better understanding. Very artistically woven together! Short-story collections are one of my least favorite genres to read, but the author does a nice job with the varying timelines and array of characters. I appreciate how the author included critiques of both Spanish and English imperialism and colonialism throughout the stories. Time and threads and links are constant themes throughout each story, referencing the notion that all of our actions have consequences, whether intentional or unintentional, for better or for worse.
“As time passes, many people discover that what was not easily seen at one moment is suddenly easier to see later. Time is an excellent teacher in this way… Some are good at digging up the past, and some are gifted with the ability to divine the future. Most people live squarely in the present without even the slightest knowledge that all of time coexists, that each era is simply a thin rind circulating the current moment.”
“It is never easy to know a story well. Sometimes, all one can gather is an impression. Sometimes, time itself muddies the details to the point little if any fact remains.”
"Javier Castillo would never come back. Didn’t we all know he would never come back? Javier Castillo had built a life around disappearing, but what was more remarkable was the fact he could reappear somewhere else, somewhere he wanted to be. But Javier Castillo did not appear somewhere else. He did not materialize in some distant land, in a bank vault or atop a mountain. He faded away cleanly because that is how his story had to end. For a man who spent his entire life disappearing to spend the last part of his life utterly unable to do so is something you and I will never understand.”
“As time passes, many people discover that what was not easily seen at one moment is suddenly easier to see later. Time is an excellent teacher in this way… Some are good at digging up the past, and some are gifted with the ability to divine the future. Most people live squarely in the present without even the slightest knowledge that all of time coexists, that each era is simply a thin rind circulating the current moment.”
“It is never easy to know a story well. Sometimes, all one can gather is an impression. Sometimes, time itself muddies the details to the point little if any fact remains.”
"Javier Castillo would never come back. Didn’t we all know he would never come back? Javier Castillo had built a life around disappearing, but what was more remarkable was the fact he could reappear somewhere else, somewhere he wanted to be. But Javier Castillo did not appear somewhere else. He did not materialize in some distant land, in a bank vault or atop a mountain. He faded away cleanly because that is how his story had to end. For a man who spent his entire life disappearing to spend the last part of his life utterly unable to do so is something you and I will never understand.”
March 27, 2018
The Affliction by C. Dale Young is a set of intricately interlinked stories, narrated by the same person whose identity we only discover at the end. What I like most about the book is the use of the trope of disappearance for being gay, for exile from family and community, and finally, for death. The magic realism of the plot does not color the style much. The language is workmanlike. Better known as a poet, Young's prose is, well, rather prosaic. Here's the opening paragraph:
Too many iterations of "explain." Overly familiar language such as "stared deeply" and "always began the explanation in the same way." Vagueness in "someone," "a sudden thing," "a gradual thing." Should the verb "stating" have any place in a novel if the character is not making a police statement? A human who can disappear and reappear somewhere else is a miracle, but the language fails to convey the miraculous.
No one would have believed Ricardo Blanco if he had tried to explain that Javier Castillo could disappear. What was the point in trying to explain it to someone, explain how he had seen it himself, how he had watched as Javier Castillo stared deeply as if he were concentrating and then, slowly, disappeared. Ricardo always began the explanation in the same way, by stating that it wasn't a sudden thing, that no, no, it was gradual thing that took sometimes as long as three minutes.
Too many iterations of "explain." Overly familiar language such as "stared deeply" and "always began the explanation in the same way." Vagueness in "someone," "a sudden thing," "a gradual thing." Should the verb "stating" have any place in a novel if the character is not making a police statement? A human who can disappear and reappear somewhere else is a miracle, but the language fails to convey the miraculous.
December 14, 2020
This story flows through a few generations of a family with mystic powers. The main family tree to follow is the Diaz's, with their healing, fortune telling, and disappearing powers. Although I felt the ending was a little flat, I really enjoyed the first three quarters of the story. It began mysteriously, and I was entertained as the plot came together. The author talked about the languages of Spanish and english as colonial languages, something I often forget.
Carlitos became aware that he and Pedro were being watched. Like any other animal, he had become aware of eyes trained on him, tracking him. Somewhere deep in our genes, this protective instinct had been passed down over millenia. And despite the passage of so much time, this reflex, if you could call it that, still functioned. If anything, it is the living proof that human beings were not always the hunters, that the likely truth is that for ages we were, in fact, the hunted.
Carlitos became aware that he and Pedro were being watched. Like any other animal, he had become aware of eyes trained on him, tracking him. Somewhere deep in our genes, this protective instinct had been passed down over millenia. And despite the passage of so much time, this reflex, if you could call it that, still functioned. If anything, it is the living proof that human beings were not always the hunters, that the likely truth is that for ages we were, in fact, the hunted.
October 16, 2019
Don't be fooled by the short story format; it's best if you can read them while the last one is fresh. Protagonists from previous stories show up as lovers or relatives in another. Eventually it all comes together as a somewhat saddening web.
Liked the touch of acknowledgement that Spanish is not a native language; it's the lesser of two evil colonizers.
Liked the touch of acknowledgement that Spanish is not a native language; it's the lesser of two evil colonizers.
April 18, 2022
a compelling story that gets muddled in its execution and let down by its prose
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews