Half-Moon Scar

by Allison Green

Allison Green's Half-Moon Scar is an edgy novel about three childhood friends who reunite as adults to discover and heal each others' emotional wounds.

Amy is a thirtysomething lesbian who escaped her small, Midwestern hometown of Willow Bay, Wisconsin, to pursue an academic career and establish a life with her lover. After years away from Willow Bay, she returns to visit the people she's left behind--only to discover that her old friends Gina and Gavin have learned to dissociate from their pasts in extreme ways that rival her own. Amy's tendency toward self-mutilation parallels both Gavin's anorexia and Gina's moody detachment from life, and Amy soon begins to fear for Gavin's life while becoming more and more bewildered by Gina's behavior.

As past and present collide and the visit extends far beyond its intended length, as the reunion forces all three to examine the shame and guilt they experienced as gay adolescents. Amy finds that she must reconcile the tense relationship with her family and her long-standing attraction to Gina, as well as her past romantic experimentation with Gavin. Together, Amy, Gina, and Gavin examine the scars--both emotional and physical, visible and invisible--that pervade their still-unresolved lives.

Genres: Fiction, LGBT, Queer, Novels, Lesbian Fiction, Lesbian

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

Reviews

[Ronald Wise · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a book I didn’t really appreciate until I was almost finished, and then, even more so afterwards. In the early pages I was dismissive of Green’s abilities at character creation and dialog, but eventually came to admire the author’s skill at realistically portraying the underlying unmentionable experiences shared by her characters.

Protagonist Amy returns from her over-the-rainbow existence in Seattle to take care of some business with people she grew up with in her small hometown in Wisconsin. Chapters about her return visit were interspersed with chapters from their childhood past, that gradually provided insights necessary to understand what happened and is happening in both timeframes. As the two story lines gradually interwove to form a cohesive whole, I began to appreciate the characters’ avoidance of openly discussing their past, while clearly basing their current interactions on knowledge from that past.

I was left by this book pondering the kinds of relationships that can exist between adults who grew up together, where, with minimal or no adult supervision for much of the time, neighborhood kids formed alliances and fought battles, and, more importantly, shared secrets about themselves, or did things that had to be kept secret. Many of those secrets involve childish things, but the most closely guarded are those involving adult things, or play with adult themes.

[Myranda Gillow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super emotional, super triggering book. It was hard to get through, and I won't say it is a feel-good read. Still, it was cathartic to see this story that could so easily have been my own. The main character got through it, I got through it. We're all going to be ok.

[Carrie]

glbt fiction