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Lightbearer
fallen angel or martyr of desire? Condemned to die by God and branded a traitor by his fellow fallen angels, Lucifer descends on Boston in a blizzard. He is drawn to humanity and vows to appear before the world again as Lucifer. But with Heaven's longstanding disinformation campaign stacked against him, he does not yet dare. When he learns of a celibate cult, the Wise Virgins, he dons human disguises and enters the lives of two of its leaders, Virgil Caldera and his aunt, Agatha Brimsmead. The powerful archangel Michael, Lucifer's creator and former lover, is behind the cult. Michael is convinced that sex is the source of all misery on earth, and has decreed that humans must renounce erotic love or burn in hellfire. The battle of wills and wits is on--not only over the bodies and souls of Virgil and Agatha, but in that age old struggle between desire and divine authority. Lucifer has one hope of defeating he must expose the deadly flaw in Michael's plan of salvation. But as long as he remains hidden, he cannot reveal the truth about his past in heaven or the scandal of the world to come. In The Bible and Milton's Paradise Lost, Lucifer is portrayed as the angel whose pride caused him to fall from heaven and turn toward evil. In Lightbearer, he is the artist, the dissident, and the genius of desire who dares to question the premise of creation itself, and who reveals that sin may be all that stands between us and living hell.
262 pages, Paperback
First published October 8, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 2, 2011
John Caruso's debut novel paints an immense cosmic drama against a dazzling canvas fashioned with "erotic frankness" (Caruso's own words) and molded by memories of Milton. Caruso dances with Dante and conjures up his own Virgil to lead the reader through seductive archetypal rings of destruction and resurrections.
His richly constructed characters struggle, succumb, surrender. High atop the Hancock Tower in Boston, heavenly hosts mirror what has gone on before and continues to be played out in vast Universal Corridors humans cannot access. (A background in Biblical references will be helpful.) Lucifer's own creation and fall repeat like rings of a labyrinth which Caruso calls "forthright, providing many escapes but only one way out." The reader struggles, as do all serious readers of theological conundrums, to know good from evil, planned from unplanned, desire from action, seduction from unconditional love. This epic drama in twelve parts mightily echoes Eden's tale, in today's Boston, all played out in shades of grey under "the bright imprimatur of the sun." Caruso's lush and unusual language choices kept me reading. His heavenly characters shape-shift and you hang on for the ride. Lucifer, Lightbearer, himself often changes into seductive men. Michael morphs into Christ as well as being Lucifer's creator-lover--with more advanced divine help..."h-EL-p." Cain and Abel mirror angelic constructs. And, as the cover notes, it's an age-old struggle between desire and divine authority.
Caruso's Lucifer reminds us that "evil, [in] all its infinite and unthinkable possibilities, will appear to you as a dear and distant good." "What is life," Lucifer asks, "without possibility, or the vigorous thrash of chance?...But choose your chaos wisely; everything you hope for is a fearful chance."
If you're up to stretching, this is a book you might choose. It's much more than a "gay read." It's apocalyptic. And still in a very deep way, hopeful.
His richly constructed characters struggle, succumb, surrender. High atop the Hancock Tower in Boston, heavenly hosts mirror what has gone on before and continues to be played out in vast Universal Corridors humans cannot access. (A background in Biblical references will be helpful.) Lucifer's own creation and fall repeat like rings of a labyrinth which Caruso calls "forthright, providing many escapes but only one way out." The reader struggles, as do all serious readers of theological conundrums, to know good from evil, planned from unplanned, desire from action, seduction from unconditional love. This epic drama in twelve parts mightily echoes Eden's tale, in today's Boston, all played out in shades of grey under "the bright imprimatur of the sun." Caruso's lush and unusual language choices kept me reading. His heavenly characters shape-shift and you hang on for the ride. Lucifer, Lightbearer, himself often changes into seductive men. Michael morphs into Christ as well as being Lucifer's creator-lover--with more advanced divine help..."h-EL-p." Cain and Abel mirror angelic constructs. And, as the cover notes, it's an age-old struggle between desire and divine authority.
Caruso's Lucifer reminds us that "evil, [in] all its infinite and unthinkable possibilities, will appear to you as a dear and distant good." "What is life," Lucifer asks, "without possibility, or the vigorous thrash of chance?...But choose your chaos wisely; everything you hope for is a fearful chance."
If you're up to stretching, this is a book you might choose. It's much more than a "gay read." It's apocalyptic. And still in a very deep way, hopeful.
May 2, 2011
Get ready to be blown away! Here is a re-telling of the age-old tale of Lucifer, the angel fallen from God's grace, that is at once conventional in its classical structure and innovative in its brave re-imagination of the story. John Caruso should be applauded not only for his lyrical prose and symphonic composition, but also for his dramatic flair, his boldness and his ability to make the reader sympathize with the devil. This novel will shake you up, make you squirm, but most importantly, it will make you question "good" and "evil" in ways you never would have; this book will make you think and feel. And, after all that, it's a wicked good read. Enjoy!
February 16, 2011
This book has a wonderful story that held much anticipation for me. Unfortunately, it's over written and could have used a good editor to trim it down and focus it.
May 3, 2011
In his debut novel, Lightbearer, John Caruso recreates the Bible’s central myth and persuasively marries its fabulism to a realistic narrative of a Boston family ravaged by disease and haunted by forbidden desire—an aunt and nephew who become leaders in a religious sect bent on eradicating that desire forever. But the ancient epic that spans the novel and transports the reader like a vast suspension bridge across time is the Bible story with a big, blasphemous difference. For Lucifer, iconic vector of sin in the Western religious and literary canon is not only its protagonist, but his story merges that sacred myth with a speculative one about the origins of same sex love and the taboo against it.
At the outset, Lucifer learns of a celibate cult, the Wise Virgins, thought to be the archangel Michael’s last day people. A hasty midnight council is called and all the fallen angels decide what must be done: the virgins must be seduced, and without a spotless people to save, Michael will be forced to delay his coming once again. Like Achilles and Aeneas of the classical epics Caruso pays tribute to, Lucifer is a reluctant hero (or anti-hero as the case may be), and deeply ambivalent about resuming his demonic duties as arch seducer and deceiver. As in John Gardner’s Grendel, Lightbearer tells the story from the villain’s point of view, but Caruso replaces the unitary perspective of the epic with multiple perspectives. The effect is that each of the four main characters--Lucifer, Michael, Virgil Caldera and Agatha Brimsmead--seem to be on an epic quest; and the soul rending crucible of desire, choice and experience that transforms them (sometimes to the point of disintegration) gives the novel its emotional power and propulsive force.
Yet it is the language—the tight weave of motifs and metaphors—that blends the threads of Biblical cosmology with those of contemporary Boston into a single complex tapestry. One example, among many, is how the homoeroticism and often explicit sex is described through a synthesis of graphic physicality and philosophical abstraction, so that the movements and repetitions of intercourse are presented in terms of universal physics—light and darkness, absence and presence, expansion and gravity. Thus desire is implicitly related throughout to the physical laws that guide creation: the emotional friction of being. In this tender passage that leads to Virgil’s first kiss, we can see the physics of desire, at work:
"Joe’s face in profile—his sanguine color, the dark red mouth—stood out, vivid and soft against the leaden dusk. The white mist of his breath vanished in front of his face. Virgil leaned closer, drawn toward his mouth like the cold air that passed between his lips and down to his lungs in its involuntary rush to fill the absence there."
If the sex is often forceful, it is because the stolen Promethean fire of same sex love is a metaphor that must plumb the height and depth of all human desire. Yet, what may be most controversial, lies not in Lightbearer’s treatment of sexuality, but in its rejection of Christian morality and its stunning reinterpretation of the meaning of its ascendency and triumph . The ending alone is a tour de force that will both thrill and shake you.
At the outset, Lucifer learns of a celibate cult, the Wise Virgins, thought to be the archangel Michael’s last day people. A hasty midnight council is called and all the fallen angels decide what must be done: the virgins must be seduced, and without a spotless people to save, Michael will be forced to delay his coming once again. Like Achilles and Aeneas of the classical epics Caruso pays tribute to, Lucifer is a reluctant hero (or anti-hero as the case may be), and deeply ambivalent about resuming his demonic duties as arch seducer and deceiver. As in John Gardner’s Grendel, Lightbearer tells the story from the villain’s point of view, but Caruso replaces the unitary perspective of the epic with multiple perspectives. The effect is that each of the four main characters--Lucifer, Michael, Virgil Caldera and Agatha Brimsmead--seem to be on an epic quest; and the soul rending crucible of desire, choice and experience that transforms them (sometimes to the point of disintegration) gives the novel its emotional power and propulsive force.
Yet it is the language—the tight weave of motifs and metaphors—that blends the threads of Biblical cosmology with those of contemporary Boston into a single complex tapestry. One example, among many, is how the homoeroticism and often explicit sex is described through a synthesis of graphic physicality and philosophical abstraction, so that the movements and repetitions of intercourse are presented in terms of universal physics—light and darkness, absence and presence, expansion and gravity. Thus desire is implicitly related throughout to the physical laws that guide creation: the emotional friction of being. In this tender passage that leads to Virgil’s first kiss, we can see the physics of desire, at work:
"Joe’s face in profile—his sanguine color, the dark red mouth—stood out, vivid and soft against the leaden dusk. The white mist of his breath vanished in front of his face. Virgil leaned closer, drawn toward his mouth like the cold air that passed between his lips and down to his lungs in its involuntary rush to fill the absence there."
If the sex is often forceful, it is because the stolen Promethean fire of same sex love is a metaphor that must plumb the height and depth of all human desire. Yet, what may be most controversial, lies not in Lightbearer’s treatment of sexuality, but in its rejection of Christian morality and its stunning reinterpretation of the meaning of its ascendency and triumph . The ending alone is a tour de force that will both thrill and shake you.
October 25, 2015
2010 Rainbow Awards Honorable Mention (5* from at least 1 judge)
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews