The Abomination: A Novel [Paperback]

Paul Golding (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 14, 2002

Cruising the seamy underbelly of London’s gay scene, James Moore Zamora is as eager to repel men as he is to seduce them. Handsome, sophisticated, intelligent, and vain, beneath his immaculately maintained exterior lies an elaborate network of deeply embedded scars from a lifetime filled with betrayal and isolation. Born to negligent, self-absorbed parents and raised among upper crust society on a picturesque Spanish island, at nine-years-old James is sent off to an exclusive Catholic boarding school in England. Met with savageness by his peers, and seduced by the twisted affections of his teachers, he soon develops a self-consciousness that passes for self-awareness and a profound cynicism that masks savage anger. Charged with linguistic precision, brutal honesty, and caustic wit, The Abomination is a disturbing yet electrifying account of one man’s tortured coming of age.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Already a hit among British literary critics, Golding's debut novel is a fluently written but ultimately hollow, pretentious tale of emotional isolation, disconnection and spiritual malaise. Its protagonist, Santiago Moore Zamora, is a witheringly caustic, tragically hip, cosmopolitan homosexual of mixed Spanish and English parentage, who can't seem to form a meaningful relationship with any of the (many) men that he meets. He endeavors, earnestly, to figure out how he's become such an angry, embittered soul, reflecting first upon a pampered but stultifying childhood in Spain, and then upon his horrendous formative years at an unnamed exclusive English boarding school. Never having received the kind of emotional support and sustenance that he desperately craved from his shallow, self-involved parents, the young Santiago goes groping blindly for love and friendship within his new environs, with eminently disturbing results. He loses his virginityAat the age of nineAto Mr. Wolfe, a schoolteacher who adamantly asserts that he's not gay, only bisexual, and who proves to be even more needy and clinging than Santiago himself. Much of the rest of the novel, which concerns Santiago's subsequent dalliance with his music teacher, Dr. Fox, and his eventual, agonizing betrayal by his best friend, Louis Clifford Cross, seems intent upon exploring the manner in which the arrogant benightedness of the "straight" world and the catty superficiality of chic gay society tend to make life hellish for sensitive, discerning homosexuals. Golding's themes may be intriguing, but his presentation is disjointed, lacking in psychological resonance and emotional clarity. Santiago Moore Zamora emerges as a tiresome, smugly unsympathetic figure, whose tragic alienation seems little more than his just desserts. Reader's Subscription, Insightout (Bookspan's new gay and lesbian book club) selections.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

This impressive debut novel successfully realizes, better than any work this reader has encountered, the emotional alienation and psychological isolation of a gay childhood. Santiago Moore Zamora is raised in the pampered confines of an island off Spain. His mother is beautiful and aristocratic, his father is distant and British, his nanny the love of his life. At age 6 he is expelled from Eden and sent to his father's public school in England. What ensues are hundreds of pages of memories as we follow Santiago though the discomfort of his early days at school; his sexual and romantic liaison, begun at the age of nine, with a teacher; the horrifying abuse of his peers. On to high school, where Santiago, who's burgeoning queer identity both strengthens him while marking him, meets with more of the same. Interruptions, but no respite, are provided by trips home, where he also has become an outsider. Needless to say, the violence is all very British: no one gets shot, they just get tortured for life. It is no exaggeration to say that Golding is a genius in conjuring up these memories; they unfurl with a rich visual and emotional intensity. But it isn't possible to provide sympathy. Santiago's telling is too tough, too arch, to allow that. At the same time, Golding's overripe hothouse prose can be tough going; he writes at times like the half-mad progeny of Edmund White and Alan Hollinghurst. Nevertheless, this book is accomplished, ambitious, and assured. Golding is a writer to watch. --Brian Kenney Brian Kenney
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (May 14, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375724397
• ISBN-13: 978-0375724398
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.9 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,983,854 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant but so very Dark, November 21, 2000

By 

Jim W. (Connecticut) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Abomination (Hardcover)

Golding's novel is gripping, like a catastrophe happening in slow motion. His cynically humorous exploration of the London's queer netherworld is gorgeously wrought. Nostalgic reflections of childhood and adolescence are painfully interspersed with intrigues and betrayals. While the protagonist/narrator is sympathetic (if prematurely jaded), I'd like to have kicked his behind a few times during the course of the book.

Read this if you long ago realized "boy meets boy" is no longer adequate reason for a novel. The prose is stellar and the author's verbosity a pleasure. Detail piled on detail create a relentess dissection of current gay (post-gay?) urban culture. The reader must be patient, though. This novel is not for the hurried - or the delicate for that matter.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Exceptionally Written Book That Falters At The End, January 27, 2002

By 

Brett Benner (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Abomination (Hardcover)

Golding's prose is like a verbal feast. Every sentence is so packed it leaves you no time to relax or barely take a breath. It is demanding and exacting and if you're looking for a light beach read this is definitely not the book. Told in flashback, the main bulk of the story is about a half Spanish half English gay man's coming of age in an English boarding school. The relationship that develops with one of his teachers begins a torturous journey into his young adult life. And although verbally plodding in some points I found it so well written I was able to excuse the sometimes involved stream of consciousness of the character.
The story is then book ended by our protagonist in the present day searching for love and connecting with a hustler he finds in a magazine ad. This is where the book veered off course for me. It certainly didn't end where I expected, but after building to a climax both figuratively and literally I expected more and was left feeling very dissatisfied and somewhat cheated.
Stylistically if you read either "The God In Flight" or Michael Arditti's "Pagen's Father" and enjoyed those you may want to give this a go.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Alienated Man Wants A Daddy, December 9, 2002

By 

interested_observer "interested_observer" (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Abomination: A Novel (Paperback)

Paul Golding structured his novel "The Abomination" to start with a short act in which the early 30-ish protagonist, James Moore, brings in a handsome, 50-ish call-boy, who uses the name "Steve" and the trade name, "The Big Uncut Man". Various feelings well up in James, causing the initial meeting to end oddly.

James then gives a detailed personal account of his years from early childhood through the British equivalent of graduating from high school. The focus is on James's rebelliousness, on his sexual relationships with two unattractive schoolmasters, and on his difficulties with his parents.

The final act is a second round between James and Steve. What insights has James gained since the first encounter? How is the adult James related to his earlier self? What is he all about now?

Golding writing is dense, filled with little felicities, in long sentences. He is especially good in describing feelings and appearances in detail. The protagonist is very intelligent and observant, though narrowly focused on himself.

Golding does provide James with settings that increase his sense of alienation. James comes from a good Old Boy English father and a genteel Spanish mother and is raised on an unidentified Spanish island by a nanny and a French Mam'zelle.

(On page 367 of the paperback, at an interview for admission to Oxford, James is asked of his knowledge of the whistle-signals of the indigenous Guanches; so I believe James comes from the Canary Islands, off the Atlantic coasts of Morocco and Western Sahara.)

James is not solidly grounded. He is too upper class and European to be a comfortable Canary Islander, his Spanish has a non-Castilian accent, he goes to England to please his father and to escape the Spanish military draft, he is snooty about liking high culture and distinctly older men, he attends a uniformed Catholic school in largely Protestant ununiformed England, he speaks English with an accent, he seems to have only one friend his own age at school (Clifford, for a while), he lives off his family's wealth, and he keeps his thoughts to himself. But he acts them out as a bitchy, nelly queen. There is much anger and maladjustment, much of it not his fault.

When he has to deal with regular people, like Steve, he just can't do it. There are too many blockages.

This is a fine book on an unsympathetic character.