Customer Reviews

What the Dead Remember: 2

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Harlan Greene dredged up memories I had long ago allowed to gather dust and cobwebs. As a fellow southerner, I found myself remembering the same lonely feelings of disassociation as I grew into purberty. I remembered my longing for being one of the gang. However, I have to confess, that Greene's book took several turns I never thought it would. The ending is so mind boggling that I wouldn't have dared to guess the story's outcome. This is no Stephen King or Jeffrey Archer novel, with simple writing done for the brain dead. The prose in this book is very reminescent of Catcher in the Rye. You really have to love to read and to love discovering a book to fully appreciate Greene's work. While I'm bored to tears with the typical gay AIDS era novel - this one is different - leaps and bounds beyond any other I've ever read. If you can secure a copy, you'll have a real treasure.

There are few writers today able to capture those literary qualities that make southern gothic fiction so special. These stories are usually tragic or grotesque, told in a languid, poetical style that perfectly evokes the damp and sultriness of the Deep South - the heat and rot are characters as palpable and tangible as their human counterparts.

"Why We Never Danced the Charleston" and "What the Dead Remember" by Harlan Greene are perfect recent examples of this genre - and expand on themes and styles developed by writers such as Flannery O'Connor and James Purdy.

"What the Dead Remember" is a feast for the reader - so much more than a simple coming-of-age story or an AIDS-story. It is multilayered. Where the author succeeds most profoundly, is in the articulation of feelings, which are beautifully realized. I can't recall reading a novel where I recognized as many feelings and situations so close to my own experience. This one should not be overlooked.

This is a poorly written coming of age story.

We spend more than half of the book learning from a narrator about his first summer on Charleston, S. C. He is a chubby, awkward 13 y/o just beginning to understand his homosexual tendencies. He stares at boys in DVD underwear ads, he gazes at handsome teenagers swimming in Sullivan Island; off the coast of South Carolina. He fantasizes about being powerful, admired , and loved.

He has been staying with his aging aunt Violet and uncle Reynaldo--so instead he's a tormented unhappy child, often mean and ill tempered.

He meets Steve, a mongoloid outcast just like himself. Responding to Steve's innocence and unconditional love, our narrator begins to enjoy the summer.

After the death of his uncle Reynaldo, our narrator returns to Sullivan Island with his mother, to close up the house and arrange aunt Violet's affairs. However, changes have occurred--culminating with all the cute boys penetrating anally time and time again.

The book jumps to the narrator's adulthood and he finds himself back in Sullivan Island.

Here's where the story is faulty. Everything and everyone has changed, including character's names.

The book is boring, filled with more similes than a Shakespearean sonnet, most of the poorly constructed, and most of them taking away from the plot.

The ending is too abrupt and the book feels like is missing half of the story. Perhaps Mr. Greene would care to fill up the blanks sometime.

The narrator at the age of thirteen spends the summer with his aunt and uncle in Charleston. Overweight and by nature withdrawn, he makes friends with Stevie a retarded local boy. But he is secretly fascinated by men in underwear. Eventually a group of local lads who are always on the beach and initially ignore him accept him into their circle, and initiate him in the delights of boy love.
Latter the narrator returns to Charleston as a man and takes up again with Stevie and becomes his carer of sorts. He also finds a lover, but there are surprising connections with the young boys he befriended on his previous visit and some nasty shocks in store too.
An honest, at times very sad, at others heart-warming, coming of age story, strangely coy at times, but well written creating an almost haunting atmosphere; worth reading. I would add thought that in retrospect I find the ultimate fate of the narrator, and more particularly how it is sealed, very disturbing. Perhaps that is why I generally avoid AIDS themed stories.

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