One Last Waltz: A Novel

by Ethan Mordden

In this brilliant and lyrical novel of family passions and personal fate, Ethan Mordden weaves a family saga of fiery intensity, as the scornful Witch of Fooley plays chess with the King of Tara to determine the fate of his sons.

Genres: Fiction, Gay Fiction, LGBT

216 pages, Paperback

First published May 15, 1986

Reviews

[Karl Kraus · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've decided to give this one a go—one sooner or later has to make good on those serendipitous used-bookstore purchases—despite my decidedly mixed reaction to the “Buddies” series. If you’re reading this, surely you know the “Buddies” series: snappily written collections of short stories that sometimes approach the cohesion of a novel, populated by largely unsympathetic characters, especially the first-person narrator, a cold fish obsessed with showing off his book larnin’. And sure enough, my heart sank when I opened *One Last Waltz* only to see, on its first page, in a preface archly titled “If the Reader Would Be So Kind,” and in its very first lines, references to *Beowulf,* *Igor’s Campaign,* and *Gunnlaugr Serpent’s-Tooth*. “Take that, my illiterate readership!” one hears Mordden muttering to himself, probably between Callas-induced paroxysms of delight that caused him to unaccountably truncate the title of that middle epic. No doubt he felt he was doing us a favor by--uncharacteristically--not referring to the latter two as *Slovo o polku Igoreve* and *Gunnlaugr ormstunga*. One must be grateful for small condescensions, I suppose.

I’ll add more to this if I make it past page 50 without throwing it against a wall.

Update! Line 8: Could Mordden at least spell “kto kogo” (or, as actually pronounced, kto kovo) correctly? All I get from that preface is that Mordden knows little, pretends to know a lot, and intends to write a story about a family.

Update! Prologue: “What we know made us vulnerable.” No, it is exactly the opposite. But otherwise the Irish clannishness rings true, if my experience is any indication. Still, six whole pages without any opera queenishness; what’s up with that?

Okay, so *One Last Waltz* purports to be a modernization of an old King of Tara legend: three sons, one a warrior, one a mason, one a poet. I’ll leave it to experts in Irish mythology to determine whether Mordden is relying on an actual legend or making it up (probably the latter; Google searches such as “mason prince witch tower,” “Ebhandre,” and “Witch of Fooley,” for instance, retrieve nothing besides references to this novel), but in any case it’s worth a good head-scratching, because the modern-day Keoghs are considerably less than legendary/epic/heroic in stature, two of them in particular: our present-day King is a drunken, abusive womanizer—not too stereotypical, eh?--and the first son, the putative warrior prince, is a common street thug (because his mom didn’t love him enough). Matters improve with the two remaining sons, an ironworker and a sensitive artist type, the latter of whom turns out, wouldn’t you know, to be gay. (Mordden drops hints at this with all the subtlety of hurled bowling balls: tea parties! exotic fruit! *Cabaret*!) Needless to say this ends up causing a lot of tension between the two brothers, who had been growing up close to each other. If indeed Mordden is employing some sort of reverse allegory or concetto, the employment seems both sporadic and superficial, and when he lays it on with a trowel—much of Part 3, for example—the unintended effect is to show up the inadequacy of the Keoghs as the stuff of legends. The end effect is annoying; it detracts from rather than enhances the story, especially as "human interest" increasingly takes the upper hand, the family bonds dissolve, and the youngest brother, having fallen in with a characteristically tedious Fire Island crowd, starts searching for himself, all in a manner decidedly un-epic.

I notice I haven’t mentioned any of the female characters. They are actually well drawn but of course little more than ancillary figures to the men. Oh, and wouldn’t you know, the ironworker has a best buddy on the job who has the hots for both him and his little brother—the homoerotically inclined construction worker being a recurring theme, if not an outright obsession, in Mordden’s writings.

There’s a decent story in here somewhere, but Mordden is too self-consciously clever, and too ambitious, by half. Two stars.

[Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is another of my top ten books that I read

[Jodie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this when I was in high school and really enjoyed it. Just a good story.