Customer Reviews

Van Allen's Ecstasy (Gay Men's Fiction)

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Michael Van Allen is a young man who is awash in successful relatives-his father is a famous composer, his mother a well-known painter, and his siblings Karl and Sara are, respectively, an attorney and columnist. It's not for not trying-Michael has taken several paths in the arts to try for success, and now works as a file clerk.

Michael wakes up in a mental hospital, where he's received treatment supposedly after screaming through one of his father's concerts. But he can't remember anything-nothing about his past, nor why he has a partner, Paul. It's like being in a world of strangers-only they know all about you! This imaginative concept provides a gripping read. It's especially captivating when Michael discovers his old journal and begins reading the entries. Somehow, reading his own words about his past rekindle dark emotions.

This had to be a challenging story to write, and, fortunately for us, was brilliantly done.

From the first sentence, the reader is plunged into the mind of Michael Van Allen: and the mystery begins. Who is he? Who was he? What happened? As he struggles to regain his memory, we gather the clues with him, and it's difficult to put this book down until we reach the climax. Engagingly written, with a roster of memorable characters; you can almost hear the piano soundtrack in the background as you join Michael's journey.

This astonishing debut novel gripped us with its story of an institutionalized young gay man, and we knew within a matter of pages that we had a new 2004 Violet Quill finalist on our hands.

The gripping set-up: 29-year-old Michael Van Allen wakes up in a mental hospital with no idea who he is nor why he is there. The son of incredibly talented parents (a mother who is a famous painter and a father who is a concert pianist), Michael is told by his doctor that he suffered a screaming breakdown at a performance.

Now, he walks a line between obsession and insanity as he tries to piece together his past. . . . Why was he institutionalized? Why does he have no memory of his life, his family, his own identity? Who is "Sasha," the ghostly presence that haunts him with mysterious advice? It is only when Michael returns to the apartment he used to share with his boyfriend, Paul, and discovers a journal he'd hidden away that his troubled past begins to come back to him. Michael could either face reality and free himself at last, or careen even deeper into insanity. Van Allen's Ecstasy will keep you reading until the last page to find out.

Reviewed by:
InsightOut Book Club catalog

"A FASCINATING ENTRÉE into the mind of Michael Van Allen, who has undergone a nervous breakdown during a performance by his famous father of Scriabin's Piano Sonata No. 5. Tushinski masterfully achieves a rich portrait of Michael's internal struggle for sanity, as well as powerful characterizations of those around him. Tushinski's sensitive and confident command of language immediately engages the reader...IMMENSELY SATISFYING."

Reviewed by:
Jim Van Buskirk,
Program Manager
James C. Hormel Gay & Lesbian Center
San Francisco Public Library

"DARKLY LUMINOUS....Tushinski's novel evokes one young man's discovery of and longing for the mystic chord into which he would transform his life. Van Allen's Ecstasy risks austerity and an expressive restraint too challenging and complex to be mistaken for plainness."

Reviewed by:
Peter Weltner,
Author of The Risk of His Music and
How the Body Prays

"Using his narrator's memory gaps and obsessions, Tushinski creates his own synaesthetic symphonies and strange new melodies, a music of mania and loss. Van Allen's Ecstasy is A COMPELLING CONTRIBUTION TO THE LITERATURE OF MADNESS AND IDENTITY."

Reviewed by:
Stephen Beachy,
Author of The Whistling Song and Distortion

Michael Van Allen is the youngest son of famous composer Douglas Van Allen and famous painter Marta Van Allen. He has a talented, successful brother named Karl, who is an attorney, and a talented, successful sister named Sara, who is a columnist. Both siblings in fact, though not nearly as famous as their parents, have managed to make names for themselves in their own right.

Michael meanwhile, is a file clerk at a law firm. During his 29 years on the earth he has tried to be a pianist, a writer, a photographer, a filmmaker and a composer. None of these ventures have panned out because Michael, despite coming from a family blessed with an overabundance of artistic talent and creativity, doesn't seem to have inherited any of it.

As time goes on he becomes more and more bitter. Never close to his family, he begins to pull further away. His revelation of his homosexuality doesn't help matters, as his family shuts out his partner, Paul, and continually reminds him of how his first partner, Gerald, walked out on him.

The story begins in the middle, with Michael waking up in a mental hospital.

He is told that he was brought there and subjected to shock treatments because he started screaming during one of his father's recitals and wouldn't stop. The treatments have obliterated all memory, so Michael has no idea what led up to his breakdown. He also remembers almost nothing of his former life.

Taken to his parent's house to recover, he is confronted with his Mother's overprotective concern, his brother's gentle encouragement and his sister's bitterness. And, though he senses a long established pattern, he has no idea why they feel and behave as they do toward him.

During this time Michael also begins to talk, once again, to Paul.

Eventually, and before he is truly ready, he decides to go home with his partner. While living in the trappings of his former life and trying desperately to remember even a small part of it, he finds the diary that chronicles his descent into madness.

The book is written in stark language, as Michael struggles to absorb the day-to-day realities of an existence that is measured by days rather than decades. The book is written in first person, so the reader shares, throughout the novel, Michael's confusion, frustration, and fear, as he tries to pick up points of reference to his own identity.

While Jim Tushinski's description of one man's struggle out of madness is taut and gripping, the true climax of the work comes when Michael begins to read his old diary. The events described therein, along with Michaels wry and often-brutal assessments of himself and those around him, will have the reader literally gasping with shock. The Michael they've known so far, this helpless, delicate creature who has tried so hard to remember something, anything of his past, was, in saner days, a cold, bitter, angry young man.

And, as the Michael in the diary is introduced to the new, post mental hospital Michael, the two personalities collide in a clash that could send both sides straight back to the darkness from which they'd been trying so hard to escape.

Tushinski's first novel is a masterful tale well told. The plotline flows smoothly, and the characters and situations are realistically and fully drawn. Tushinski easily manages to evoke a myriad of emotions from his readers as they journey with Michael, his family, and his partner, Paul, to insanity and beyond.

(...)

This is the beautifully written story of Michael Van Allen's struggle to find his place in the rapidly shifting landscape of his troubled life. The descriptive narrative throughout the book is richly rendered, but the journal entries provide the meat of this story. Michael's discovery that who he was is not who he wishes to be provides an interesting twist in his journey toward recovery. This one is a winner!

"'I remember and remember and remember,' Jim Tushinski writes, 'and the act of remembering becomes a physical sensation, like drinking water to quench a thirst.' In Van Allen's Ecstasy, the act of reading, too, becomes a physical sensation. This is the story of Michael Van Allen, a man unable to create in a family of natural-born creators, a man yearning for the joy of unrestrained creative activity--ecstasy. What Michael doesn't know is that there is a price to pay for ecstasy.

We are lost with Michael in a story in a mist, feeling our way through place, time, and people that ought to be familiar, but isn't. This is a story about how we are who we are, even without all the memories and connections we depend upon every day to help us define ourselves. Tushinski has written in a prose that is by turns major-key bold and then minor-key tentative in response to the estranged world that we--the writer, the reader, and Michael Van Allen himself--must make familiar once again."

Brian Bouldrey,
Author of Love, the Magician,
Monster, and The Boom Economy