Customer Reviews

The Abomination

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

The Abomination is one of the darkest, most disturbing novels I have read in a while. The plot, language and dialogue are disarming from beginning to end. This novel is about a half English, half Spaniard homosexual male who finds himself in an existential crisis when it comes to his relationships with men. He looks back into the days in an English boarding school after his arrival from Spain. That is where his relationships with men begin and how his confusion in a world where heterosexuality is the only thing acceptable in today's society and what has to be done in order to be accepted as a gay man in the modern world. There are various twists throughout the novel.

Santiago Moore Zamora is not a sympathetic character in the slightest. He is the proverbial anti-hero in more ways than one. Coming from an aristocratic Spanish mother, his homosexuality is more of a taboo in the eyes of the people closest to him. But his childhood memories are not an attempt at gaining sympathy from the readers. Santiago's language is dark and apathetic from beginning to end. It is difficult to describe just how impassive the character is -- suffice it to say that his recollection of his first sexual encounter with a teacher at the tender age of nine are disturbing to the max. And things get all the darker as the novel progresses. The Abomination is the sort of novel that does not sugarcoat the events and instead illustrates the underbelly of the human condition. Paul Golding is quite a gifted author. He reminds me of the authors Corene Lemaitre and Kate Christensen in that the characters are quite flawed. I recommend this great novel and look forward to reading more books by this talented British author.

The Abomination was not, for me, an easy novel to read. The writing is always excellent and in some parts, remarkable, but I personally found the narrator to be a little too hostile and angry. The world has not been kind to him--abandoned to boarding school by his parents at a young age, betrayed by friends, cruelly ridiculed by enemies--he has every right to be hostile. He's just not the best narrator to spend over 400 pages with. As I said before, the writing is excellent--some passages were among the best I have read recently and therefore I believe this is certainly a worthwhile novel, just be aware that your narrator may be a little off-putting.

The core of "The Abomination" is a coming-of-age story about a boy raised in Spain who is sent to boarding school in England. Both a foreigner and a "poofter," James (Iago) Zamora assumes--both actively and passively--the role of outsider and, during the course of his education, has sexual and emotional relationships with two pedophilic teachers. The novel begins (and ends) years later, with an explicit (but entirely unerotic) romp through London's gay underworld and two trysts with a male escort.

Rarely in English literature does one encounter a more unlikable protagonist. Even during his school years, it's difficult to sympathize with James, in part because much of the alienation he experiences (particularly in the early years) is self-imposed. He is, in his own words, an "insufferable brat," an upper-class, spoiled-rotten snob who detests the philistine behavior of the English schoolboys whose very presence he must endure for eight years. His parents, although wealthy beyond what most of us can imagine, are negligent and self-absorbed, but compared with most of the world's youth (gay or otherwise), the young Zamora enjoys a life of luxury and coddling.

What saves the book from unendurable pretentiousness is Golding's language. His prose style recalls most frequently Proust (who gets an honorable mention towards the end), occasionally Woolf, and sometimes even Nicholson Baker--for example, during a particularly dense passage describing the miscellaneous and extensive contents of his childhood nursery or six excruciating pages detailing, from toe to head, how James grooms his (I kid you not) body hair. The narrative is confident and beautiful notwithstanding its hundred-word sentences and florid overstatement.

Yet, in spite of his masterful and encyclopedic use of language and (moreover) in spite of all that his hero tolerates as an adolescent, Golding's novel is remarkably dispassionate. The hustler hired by Zamora, after enduring his semi-vitriolic abuse, says that James "thinks too much." True enough, but--more accurately--James doesn't seem to feel much of anything. His emotional detachment works for and against the book: Zamora comes across as a cold-hearted, emotionally stilted adult, but his childhood traumas are minimized by his aloofness.

An article in the British press by Peter Conrad dismissed "The Abomination" as little more than self-love, a literary act of onanism. But I think this criticism is unfair: Golding isn't in love with his self as much as he is in love (rightly) with the sound of his own voice. How a reader will respond to this book depends entirely on whether you think the author's eloquence is enough to make up for the novel's shortcomings. Judging purely on style and linguistic ability, I think Golding's debut is an extraordinary (upper-cased) Achievement. I hope, though, that he next uses his considerable talent to write a proper Novel.

In this dark but often humorous novel, much of which is set in an English boys' school, the abomination ostensibly here is the one that the narrator's father quotes in a letter to him: the reference from Leviticus of a man lying with a man. Of course the irony is that there has been none of man lying with man here; it's all been men and boys-- more specifically, the narrator's ongoing sexual encounters with teachers at the school. I would argue that more abominable is the attitudes of the parents of the narrator (whose English name is James Moore), each most unattractive in different but unique ways.

More sinned against than sinning, James is the most admirable character in this dense novel of few decent people-- the nanny, a minor character, comes to mind-- a better description would be that he's the least despicable of the main characters. He manages to survive boarding school by his sheer wit and considerable bravado.

Some sections of this very well written novel are extraordinary: the scene in which the narrator dons a flapper dress and shows up at a school dance is quite remarkable. The section near the end of the novel when the narrator rhapsodizes about the brave gay men who came out after Stonewall, many of whom died in the AIDS holocaust, is fine writing and approaches poetry, I think. "We remember them walking with their heads held high against the winds of catastrophe, walking with that special nonchalant grace that so characteriazed them; or their heads thrown up for drama, telling tales of a luminous blue about themselves, about people like us, about the outcast children of Sodom and Gomorrah. Bless you, darling boys; and thank you." This quotation from a passage that goes for several pages and is almost an epiphany made me long for a different ending. But to take the words of the narrator for my own: "I'll get over it, I promise you that much, I swear to it."

Certainly it is the writer's right to take any view he prefers. I'm just mildly disappointed that a writer so young could be so cynical. Shouldn't that be a trait for the middle-aged? I felt a little like Peggy Lee singing "Is That All There Is" upon finishing this novel. Mr. Golding, however, managed to keep me reading this tour de force by the sheer brilliance of his writing.

Paul Golding's superb first novel is a coming-of-age story of an extremely wealthy gay man whose upbringing amidst servants on a country estate on a Spanish island and then at the best Catholic British public chools would seem to an outsider one of exceptional privilege. But the story Golding's protagonist, James Moore, has to tell is one of considerable horror: virtually ignored by his self-indulgent and spoiled parents, he finds his boarding schools nightmares where his peers mericlessly attack or shun him, and his teachers either abet his tormentors or corrupt him sexually. The novel's superb titles carries multiple meanings: while James is eventually termed an "abomination" by his own father (following the words of Leviticus in its injunction against men sleeping with other men), more abominations might more readily those practised against James in his childhood. And yet by the time James is an adult, and narrates the novel for us, he had become something of a moral abomination himself, and of course not at all in the sense either his father or the writers of Leviticus meant. His voice has become full of rancor and venom, his snobbery ruthless and cruel, his capacity to love almost entirely stunted. Golding is quite unsparing in his treatment of his protagonist, and seems clear (through his use of Moore's purpled and poisonous narrating voice) that not all of James's failings can be laid at the feet of his parents, teachers, or tormentors.

This is one of the most exciting and intelligent debuts in gay fiction since Alan Hollinghurst's THE SWIMMING-POOL LIBRARY, and the two works can be justly compared. Golding's James Moore and Hollinghurst's William Beckwith share much in common: in their expensive British educations, their sexual promiscuities, and their savage snobbism. But whereas Hollinghurst attempted to critique his protagonist's character via context (showing how obtuse beckwith was to anything but himself or his pleasures), Golding more convincingly and bravely allows his protagonist's lurid furies to stand as a more direct means of critiquing his excesses. The novel's framework, though interesting (showing an adult James becoming enamored of a male prostitute, and primping himself elaborately before their hired tryst), perhaps does not come across wholly as Golding intends: we seem to lose a good deal of understanding as to what has happened to Moore in the intervening fifteen years between leaving for Oxford and the framing sequence that needs elaboration. Still, the debut is magnificent; this may be the best new gay novel to come down the pike in years.

I'm always looking for insight when I read fiction: what was the author's intent? How much of the story was drawn on experience and how much was invented? What is the author revealing about himself or herself? As compelling and complex as the "The Abomination" might be, I could never get past the author's full-cover photograph on the inside front page of my edition. In my mind, Paul Golding looks like the sardonic antagonist of his story, a pessimistic gay nephew to the literary tradition of Jane Eyre. It was difficult to separate his image from the story.

Santiago Moore Zamora is the epitome of an identity crisis; called Iago by his gorgeous mother, James by his English father, and Moore at his British public school, he alternates between being and speaking Spanish and being and speaking English. His needs fluctuate as well; he wants and is repelled by his mother, a teacher, and a prostitute. Catholic in a Protestant world, gay in a straight one, dark-skinned in a light-skinned one, readers are never allowed to forget that this character must constantly struggle for every kernel of self-worth he can acquire.

His favorite nanny suddenly a relic in his past, Santiago must emerge from his infancy and early childhood and evolve past his mother's vanity and his father's emotional distance. From a vaguely aristocratic background, Santiago could enjoy the privilege of money, social breeding, and the warmth of the sun on his island off the coast of Spain during the reign of Franco, except that his father, in an attempt to shake off his Spanish taint, sends him to school in England. The next eight years of his life are a relentless litany of bullying and abuse the likes of which would drive many an adolescent to suicide. The story of James' exile from Eden is sandwiched between visits from a prostitute, the first being one that he doesn't want but can have, the second being one that he wants but can't have.

Golding constructs a narrative using language that while consistent, tends to over reach in places. Evocative at times, tiring in others, he wields the run-on sentence as a skillful device, though had he done so with some economy, it would have seemed more sophisticated as opposed to a bulky, one-trick pony. Yet it is impossible not to get caught up the descriptive richness of "The Abomination," especially when he writes of his campy mother or sun-soaked beaches.

The complexity of the story emanates from the nihilism of the narrative voice; Santiago, in my opinion, is both the antagonist and protagonist of the story. Since he is bullied and harassed beyond blame, he assumes the snobbish mantle of his mother as a protective device upon arriving at school. But after eight years of misery, he has internalized this completely. As we are left uninformed about the years between leaving school and assuming the story, readers are led to believe that since he is an outrageously vain and horribly bitter man, he has forgotten to take this armor off. That he remains so self-defeating is his own testament to the frigidity of his parents and the British school system.
As far as bookends go, I expected more from the story of Dave the prostitute, a.k.a. "Big Uncut Man." I thought that perhaps Santiago would make some use of his visits, perhaps reclaim some sexual dignity or enjoy a cathartic interlude. But in the end, Big Uncut man simply uses the power Santiago has invested in him to bully and alienate him, an appropriate usage given Santiago's behavior during his first visit.

"The Abomination" is very ambitious in scope and you should be, too, when reading it.

[I am resubmitting this review after having first submitted it over two weeks ago.]

"The Abomination" is a hugely ambitious first novel by an author of great promise. Paul Golding is a master wordsmith with an uncanny ear for dialogue and a gift for characterization. That the novel, ultimately, fails to cohere, is due to Golding's miscalculation in assembling it in two parts. Part one, which is set in contemporary London and includes a devastatingly exact portrait of gay club life, introduces the reader to its first-person narrator, for the time being unnamed, who is toying with the idea of a tryst with Dave, the slightly older male prostitute whose personal ad he finds in a men's contact magazine: "Big Uncut Man. Handsome, lean, muscular, mature, trustworthy." The outcome of that affair is left "hanging" as the narrative shifts to Santiago's (our hero's name is Santiago Moore Zamora) privileged childhood on an unidentified Spanish island, as the son of a British ex-public school boy and his ravishingly beautiful Spanish wife. All of the right Freudian strings are plucked, and there is even an ex-nanny that the child has become fixated on, but there is little in his life, graced as it is by wealth and social standing, that makes "Iago," as his mother calls him, particularly sympathetic. In fact, he seems to be a bit of a whiner. When his father-the villain in the piece--packs Iago off to his former Catholic boarding school in England, Santiago Zamora becomes James Moore, and it is in this guise that he has long-term affairs, first with a young teacher named Wolfe, who tells the linguistically challenged James that he is a "bisection," and then with his music teacher, Mr. Fox. There is little sense of exploitation here, as James, even at age nine, is essentially the controller in both affairs. But there is an implication that James' parents, who are admittedly shallow and materialistic, are somehow the authors of their son's turpitude. Perhaps it is his eagerness to seek refuge from the taunts of his fellow students-they call him "woman"--with such weak and unremarkable men that leads to James' self-loathing in the frame story, but the connection is not made clear. However, there are some wonderfully realized set-pieces that more than compensate for the novel's structural weakness, including the story of James' only friendship at school (with a boy named Cross, who later betrays him) and the description of his last appearance (one he describes in terms of humiliation, rather than triumph) among his classmates, in flapper drag, before he leaves to attend Oxford. James presents himself to the reader in all candor as a self-pitying ingrate and a snob, with his icy mother as his primary role model, but he is not without a sense of self-worth. And that's what makes his infatuation with Dave, a mere phone number from the back of a magazine, whom he must pay money to be with, all the more puzzling. Does he honestly hope for love from such an impersonal source? The fifteen years between James' graduation from public school and his encounter with Dave are only hinted at. Golding asks a lot if he intends his readers to fill in the gap themselves. Writers as diverse as Orwell and Robert Graves have written unflinchingly of the English public school system, with its honor codes and institutionalized homosexuality; Golding's novel falls in that tradition. I only wish he had spent less time at school and more in the bars, where his story breaks fresher ground.