The Sky Below: A Disturbing LGBTQ Literary Novel – A Gay Bildungsroman of Hope

by Stacey D'Erasmo

From a rising literary star “in the tradition of Carol Shields and A. S. Byatt” comes this luminous story of a contemporary man’s metamorphosis.
Andrea Barrett and Michael Cunningham have lauded Stacey D’Erasmo for the beauty of her language and her ability to create worlds that leave a lasting impression. In her new novel, D’Erasmo reaches back to Ovid for inspiration in this tale of how the mythic animates our everyday lives. At thirty-seven, Gabriel Collins works halfheartedly as an obituary writer at a fading newspaper in lower Manhattan, which, since 9/11, feels like a city of the dead. This once dreamy and appealing boy has turned from a rebellious adolescent to an adult who trades in petty crimes.His wealthy, older boyfriend is indulgent of him—to a point. But after a brush with his own mortality, Gabriel must flee to Mexico in order to put himself back together. By novel’s end, we know all of Gabriel’s ratty little secrets, but by dint of D’Erasmo’s spectacular writing, we exult in the story of an imperfect man who—tested by a world that is often too much for him—rises to meet the challenge.

Genres: Fiction, LGBT, Novels, Queer, Literature, Literary Fiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 9, 2009

About the author

Stacey D’Erasmo is the author of the novels Tea, (a New York Times Notable Book of the Year); and A Seahorse Year (a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year and a Lambda Literary Award winner). Her writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, and Ploughshares. She is currently an assistant professor of writing at Columbia University.

Reviews

[Karen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have to stop reading books based on blurbs on the dust jacket but Michael Cunningham described this book as "lyrical, haunting and vividly written" .

Not me-I found it to be disturbing, confusing and meandering.

Story kicks off in happyville, the idyllic magical childhood of a young boy in rural Massachusetts. I loved this first chapter and settled in with a satisfied smile for a captivating story. But I was sucked in too soon. By the second chapter the protagnonists family life dissolves and he is living with his mother in a motel in Florida. What follows is drug and sexual abuse, struggles throughout adult hood all interwoven with the themes of "Ovid" and a serious physical decline.

Another book I was glad to usher back to Robbins library......

I will say that the author-a young woman-does a remarkable (or maybe authentic/sympathetic) job telling the story from the POV of a gay man-or at least it seems she does. But what do I know about the POV of a gay man? I am a straight middle aged woman. Oh well.

[Simone · Rating 4 out of 5]

SLAYYYYYYED!! This book was constantly surprising me - so much happened and it never ever got boring. Great I guess shock factor with some of the scenes I read LOL but wow. The start and the ending was so good morphed perfectly I really enjoyed it even though it felt like it took forever to read.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

[spoiler alert] In "The Sky Below," her third novel, Stacy D'Erasmo continues the trajectory into impressionism begun in her second novel, "A Seahorse Year." As she blurs the line between realism and impressionism, her vision becomes more intense and her language sharper. In "A Seahorse Year," madness is the specter that drives the narrative; in "The Sky Below," it's longing. Gabriel--abandoned by his father at an early impressionable age (all of his ages seem impressionable)--longs for a return to the safe haven for imagination afforded by his boyhood home in Massachusetts. There, his dreamy mother and older sister had joined him in games, the best of which was an annual construction of a miniature "City" on the living-room floor, made out of collected household scraps, infused with familial love and imaginative scope for each individual. The father's departure punches an incomprehensible black hole in Gabe's cosmos, pulling the family into a financial mess that forces the sale of their beloved house and relocation to a depressing Florida motel, where his mother, dreamer turned reluctant businesswoman, becomes practical and emotionally distant.

Exiled in Florida, Gabe launches the first of many schemes aimed at recovering a home for his fancies, and in the process matures (in a way), becoming, as well as a dreamer and a burgeoning collage artist, a young burglar, drug dealer, and prostitute. Money represents access to a life worthy of his imagination; its spell strengthens (not surprisingly) once Gabe, bearing an art degree, moves to New York City. There, he collects money as avidly as he collects objects for his collages and photos for his day job as obituary writer at a failing newsweekly. Naturally, his vocations aren't the source of his wealth; to his more sordid identities, add ghostwriter and blackmailer. What's powerful about D'Erasmo's portrait of this rather unlikable man is Gabe's eye for beauty amid the refuse. Also, again, his longing: to arrive on the artistic scene, to buy a particular house in Brooklyn that symbolizes familial wholeness, to embody the sublime beauty and transformative power of the half-mortals, half-gods in the myths his mother had read to him in his boyhood. Meanwhile, his actual life is falling apart, as his boyfriend, sister, employers, and best friend each realize that their positions are subordinate to his ambitions, even if none of them (perhaps including Gabe) fully understands the metaphysical truth of those ambitions.

All of this desire and double-dealing needs a crisis, and D'Erasmo provides one, in the form of a health scare that leads Gabe to abandon the mess he's made in New York and pursue a more direct resolution of his existential angst. At first, the new setting--a former convent in rural Mexico where spiritual pilgrims mix with local residents--feels both unprepared and potentially predictable, and after several hundred pages of savoring D'Erasmo's gorgeous, jewel-like sentences, I drifted a little in Mexico. What saves the novel is what saves Gabe: a (filial) relationship with the young Julia, whose health, artistic expression, and spiritual transformation become more important to Gabe than his own. In this unexpected place, Gabe trades his mythical City for a real community, albeit one where he is not in control and must embrace a different sort of kinship than he had envisioned.

Despite this plot-heavy description, "The Sky Below" is at least as much about story itself, and, apart from the lush writing, that's what made it satisfying to me. Each of us brings stories out of our childhood, like a precious rock collection; each of us must decide what place to give that collection in our adult lives, and how much those stories will shape our adult identity and destiny. For Gabe, an artist whose specialty is collecting and recombining things, stories are even more powerful. It's telling that Gabe's older sister, who is also creatively gifted, has no such fond memories of the Massachusetts house, which she calls "that falling-down dollhouse with the mice and no heat." The same collection in another's hands adds up to something very different. In sketching the facets of this truth, D'Erasmo doesn't pretend to solve the question of how fate and individual will each shape Gabe's journey. Rather, in constructing his beautiful, flawed, longing consciousness, she collapses the two into a single glimmering narrative arc.

[Allyson · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was so disappointed with this book. Both Sigrid Nunez and Joan Silber wrote positive back cover blurbs, so I was very intrigued. I very much enjoyed reading Silber's The Size of the World and Ideas of Heaven as well as Nunez's The Last of Her Kind, but their experiences of this book were hugely opposite to mine.
While reading it, I acknowledged the curious styling, interesting ideas, unique thoughts, free flowing feel of it but it just escaped me. None of the characters moved me or captured me. I felt like it should, they should but it left me cold, fell flat, completely eluded me.
And I almost put it down around page 80, which I rarely do.
So instead I sped-read to see what happened and was even more disappointed.
Was torn to not include here, but was sort of curious what others might say.
So here it is- nothing much to me at all.
Have never read her two others, but am less inclined to do so now.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Spoiler alert:
When we follow him as a damaged, dangerous queer youth who gets involved in sex for money, selling petty drugs and theft is the best part. He is not your "typical" criminal and breaks into houses looking for things, often not expensive, to use to create memory boxes. Eventually, he uses found object, the detritus of the city to make art memory type boxes. The relationship he has with his best friend who happens to be female is also interesting to read and engaging, as is his obsession with a house that feels like the one who was ripped form as a child. Then he gets cancer, goes to Mexico and acts crazy. The end.

The first half of this book is really the best part, the 2nd half is not equally as good.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

The writing in the book was exceptionally beautiful. I love books that have a strong sense of place and explore, even just in a secondary way, how being in a particular place shapes people. This book moves from New England to Florida to Arizona to New York City to Mexico very artfully and the author did a great job of bringing you to those places and using them to advance the plot and the main character in different ways. I struggled with this book a little because the plot felt muddled pretty frequently and there is a whole section where very little happens. The protagonist is difficult to like and in a way, that makes him more intriguing and more human because he keeps messing up and doing things wrong when it feels like it would be so easy for him to get it together.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a pleasure to get into. D'Erasmo creates a lead character that is pathetic and familiar.
She has captured the plight of the Contemporary New York Gay Man Nearing Middle Age in a unique and pioneering way.

One thing I ask myself when I'm reading a good book is "Has anyone else written this novel?" I don't believe they have. Creating a character that hasn't been explored yet is essentially inventing our own lives.

This is stuff is Michael Cunningham caliber, and I don't think I've ever said that about anyone's writing. Emotional and Perceptive.
And really really painful to read at moments.

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am really torn about how to review this book. I really, really loved it, for 99% of the time. But in the end, I'm a little confused as to why it ended up where it did.

There is magical realism that runs throughout the entire book. And there is a chance for something really crazy and magical to happen, and then it just slowly dissipates. So I was sad about that.

But the majority of the book is entertaining, enlightening, inspiring, dynamic, and extremely interesting. The relationships are heartfelt and never feel contrived. And if you are already a fan of Joseph Cornell's artwork, you will really appreciate his appearance in the theme of this book.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as strong as Seahorse Year, but still a good story. The main character is a little pathetic in his obsessions at times, and yet I still liked him and wanted him to get his life together. D'Erasmo leaves the reader hanging in the end, in a postmodern way, but it irritated me less than that kind of thing usually does.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good writing, sometimes beautiful writing. Got weirder as it went on, and I liked it less as it went on.

[Robert Wechsler · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel is almost as striking and original as The Complicities. But this time it's not the structure that makes the novel special. The writing is a bit better, with some amazing passages, and the first-person narration works very well, but what made this novel for me were the relationships. One of the good things about a gay narrator is, in this case, the range of non-romantic relationships with women (and some men) throughout his life. It’s not that this a realistic novel; it’s not. But it’s not fantasy, at least in the traditional sense. It’s just an odd, freewheeling version of reality.

For me, the only letdown was the last section of the novel. After having read two of D’Erasmo’s novels, I’m a firm believer in her writing and look forward to reading more.

[Rebeccawwwww · Rating 1 out of 5]

It doesn’t help that the synopsis on the back of the book isn’t the same as the synopsis on Goodreads. I’d probably have never had picked it up.
I tried to like it. I promise. It was so hard to get through. I felt like Gabriel wasn’t a likable character and you were detached from him the whole time.

[S · Rating 2 out of 5]

Weird.

[H. Frances · Rating 5 out of 5]

Itself mythic. Overflowing with classical cadence. Not a page where I wasn't surprised and/or wounded. Lovely.

[Brian Want · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a five-star book that morphed into a one-star book, derailing itself needlessly and ridiculously. I can't think of anything I've read in recent years that squandered its promise so wantonly.

[christa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes you end up sitting next to a stranger, who has your undivided attention for a few hours. She starts telling you a story in a low storyteller voice, using pretty phraseology and vivid imagery, and just went you're kind of lulled into a word coma, she says something funny. You have to go back and rewind the line in your head, hear it again, laugh, and then continue listening.

Then all of a sudden, the storyteller goes a little loco. And you're like "I was with you up until the point where the protagonist starts feeling for feathers growing out of his neck. And by the way: What the hell is he doing in Mexico?" She just looks at you, and keeps going. Puts the protagonist in a tree, wearing wings. Kills a little girl with bad teeth. He hatches an egg. And you feel a little misled because this was a good story. You trusted this storyteller to stay honest. But this deviation has you second-guessing everything she said, all those words you liked, two hours ago.

That is exactly what reading "The Sky Below" by Stacey D'Erasmo is like. It starts with Gabe Collins, imaginative and sensitive and arty. His father leaves. Gabe becomes a hoarder of things and money, who eventually turns to petty crime and liaisons with men in bus stop bathroom stalls. Then he is in art school, taking his found objects and creating something like dioramas. Then he is an adult, writing obits for a small newspaper, ghostwriting popular novels, stealing knick knacks and taking platonic baths with his best friend Sarah and ditching his boyfriend at the ballet.

Gabe is such a great character. Not necessarily likable. Questionable motives. A plotter who isn't smart enough to plot enough steps ahead. He's a little lazy, still a hoarder. He keeps bricks of money in his freezer.

But his story becomes derailed when he finds out he has lazy cancer, and he takes off for Mexico in search of something. His father, I guess. He meets people in a commune and decides to sleep with a woman who refers to herself as Malcolm X. [This is actually a pretty hot scene]. But the whole time I was wondering why? What does this mean? It has to mean something because it's not interesting to stand alone as a story.

I don't know Stacey D'Erasmo, but I bet that she says things like "I just let the characters tell their own story. Gabe led me to the house on Pineapple Street. Gabe told me he wanted to be in Mexico. Gabe put himself in a tree, wearing wings, and then he took himself home again." And my suggested response would be to nod, tell her she makes stunning sentences and that this book is unlike anything you've ever read before. But that it wasn't enough.

[Karen]

* 3 Books For An Out Of Body Experience

D'Erasmo's third novel, a modern-day version of Ovid's Metamorphoses, includes an ominous epigraph from the poem: "Heaven was no safer." There is little safety in the book, which follows the life of Gabriel Collins. His mother "believed in other realms, a reality beyond this one." She reads Greek mythology to the boy, who seeks to understand why his father left the family, wondering "Why is it that people get so much bigger when they disappear?" Gabriel grows up to write newspaper obituaries. He suffers mysterious wounds, and ultimately, cancer. Upon learning of his diagnosis, he says "I could feel the feathers moving under my skin, pushing their way up," mirroring the transformation of his favorite mythological character, Tereus, a king who turns into a bird. In the novel's final chapters, Gabriel travels to Mexico in hopes of finding his father, and joins a commune. In preparation for a ritual, he dons enormous wings, "the biggest sign of all that I was doing the right thing." D'Erasmo's novel leaves me emotionally disoriented. I feel transported to a curious, frightening world where we are more than our bodily selves.

[Larry H]

I absolutely loved Stacey D'Erasmo's last book, A Seahorse Year, so I've been waiting for her to publish a follow-up novel for several years. I was really excited when I found this in the bookstore. And honestly, I wasn't disappointed at all. D'Erasmo is a terrific writer; she creates memorable characters you feel for and care about, and the language she uses is absolutely beautiful. This book is the story of Gabriel, who never quite got over his father abandoning his family when he was young. Gabriel becomes a self-absorbed, almost hedonistic character at times, who builds an emotional wall around himself but yet takes other people's emotions for granted. And interestingly enough, D'Erasmo makes Gabriel an empathetic character instead of a one-dimensional stereotype. I found this story tremendously compelling--I read the book in a few hours because I was traveling. Yet I didn't give this book more than four stars because I felt the story lost focus toward the end with Gabriel's trip to Mexico. Still, a very worthwhile read.

[Bookmarks Magazine · Rating 3 out of 5]

D'Erasmo walks a fine line in this unruly fairy tale of a novel: her characters, quirky to the point of becoming neurotic, inhabit a pseudo-enchanted world that hovers between fantasy and reality. Despite being "D'Erasmo's most complex and accomplished character to date" (New York Times Book Review), Gabriel isn't very likeable, but his self-absorption and amorality have their roots in a longing for meaning that resonated with critics, who described him as "unnervingly compelling" (Boston Globe). D'Erasmo's bright, crystalline prose illuminates the fanciful world she has created, though some critics grew tired of its perpetual strangeness and excessive details. The novel is by turns beautiful and bizarre, mesmerizing and mystifying.

This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.

[Bryce · Rating 1 out of 5]

WTF.

The friend who recommended this book to me said that it would make a great indie movie. And since I've seen many many indie movies about whiny self-indulgent losers suffering from mid-life crises, I'd have to agree. But that doesn't make this book -- or those movies -- any more enjoyable.

Gabriel, the main character of the story, is miserable. And because he's also a despicable person, he uses his misery as an excuse to treat his family and loved ones like horse manure. He does this for 190 pages, then he is diagnosed with cancer, then he travels to Mexico and then I stopped reading. I couldn't take any more.

In my brain, Gabe dies after spending a great deal of time stuck in a prison cell in Mexico City and then all his friends and family have some pie together. And I'm sure that ending satisfies me far more than the real ending of the book possibly could.

[Jen Knox · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book began beautifully, with strong prose and likable characters. I would like to rate it a bit more specifically, at a 3.75, because I am torn between "liking it" and "really liking it". It was one of those that seemed magical and lovely, but I found long stretches of prose that seemed to fall flat, as though D'Erasmo was over-editing herself, or being over-edited. The story itself is unique, but it became bogged down in places with over-wrought sentimentality and forced metaphors. Personally, I like to be in the stratosphere with books like this, grasping at reasons, only to find some subtle epiphany that strikes me suddenly, like gravity. There is so much beautiful about this book, I wanted more from it.

[Shana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I heard Stacey D'Erasmo read from this novel late last year at the Happy Endings reading series, and I was hooked. I bought a copy as soon as it came out this January, and it didn't disappoint. The novel's main character is, in many ways, not a good guy, but there's still something incredibly attractive about him, and he makes quite a compelling narrator with quite a strange and interesting story to tell. Much as I enjoyed the story, though, the best thing about the novel is D'Erasmo's prose. She has a gift for observation and description that dazzled me more than once. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

[Alex Roberts · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was a bit underwhelmed by this title, but perhaps brought too high an expectation owing to reviews. The main character's supposed artistic bent- I was lured here by the intrigue of his Cornellian box constructions- is hardly emphasized nor consistently authentic feeling. Furthermore, his behavior throughout much of the central portion of the novel is ill-mannered and boorish; which, certainly, can be endured, if there is an adequate amount of flavorful activity otherwise (there isn't), or his ruminations were of a greater depth and complexity. A reasonably satisfying ending left me less disappointed then I might otherwise have been.

[Oriana]

From the Los Angeles Times via Powell's:

In her conceptually brilliant, imaginative, brimming and suspenseful novel, her evocations of place are ravishing; her characters are at once richly human and magical and their confounding predicaments are both commonplace and cosmic. Erotic and mystical, intricately made and deeply felt, The Sky Below is a vivid tale of profound dimension and resonance.

Hmmm, all by itself like this, that sounds kind of vacuous and over-dramatic, but the review as a whole was really good...

[Red · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was weird! I think I liked it, but kind of in the way that I like some provocative modern Art – it's interesting, and visual, and a little unsettling. There was a lot about art in the book, and a lot about Place – I think those were my favorite parts. I never felt like I understood the protagonist, which left me feeling off-balance, and I felt like I didn't understand the structure of the book, either. I don't particularly like that unsettled feeling, so I didn't particularly like the experience of reading this book, but I did kind of appreciate it in a strange way.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a joy! A book I got for free (at a conference, on a table at the office--a bound galley) that is a surprising joy. I wasn't familiar with the author who has a wonderful writing style. She describes the life of Gabriel Callahan who lives in a world touched by magical realism. Of course he wants to become a bird--perhaps he will. He is a dreamer who sweeps us along in his dreams--along with his petty larceny and artistic creations.

[Diem Shepard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Still making up my mind. This one came with high praise from both Andrea Barrett and Michael Cunningham for the beauty of the language. I suppose that's accurate. I stopped caring about the first person narrator; no, that's not quite right. I became much too aware that he was a character, not a person. (Of course, one is always aware of that, but one should be able to keep that awareness somewhat at bay.)

[Sebastian Hagedorn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got this book as a birthday present, because I had put it on my wish list. When or why I don't recall, as sometimes happens. I enjoyed reading it, but it never completely grasped me and ultimately I'm at a loss what to make of it. I wasn't as perturbed by the magical elements as some other reviewers were, but I wasn't fully satisfied with the ending, either. If it's a slow burner that'll stay with me or if I may forget all about it, only time will tell.

[Christopher Castellani · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book that resists categorization, which is only one of the many things that make it an amazing accomplishment. Allegorical, rooted in myth, surreal, and yet marked with a fully human longing that comes through on every page. D'Erasmo is working on a different, and higher, plane than most fiction writers out there today, and this novel, which haunted me long after I finished it, is a the perfect example of her great talent.

[Ellis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nicely written. Disturbing and strange plot describing the life of a person from about age 8 into his forties. Sordid life from a troubled childhood. Hated the ending though. I mean really hated the ending! You grow to hate the main character, but I did enjoy reading the book because of how well it was written (aside from the end, in which it seems like the author sort of gave up).