Quote: I loved this! Definitely a story that will stay with me for a while. I haven’t really ever read anything quite like it. Disturbing and graphic, vivid and realistic, with moments of tenderness, never cliche or overly sentimental.

Another reviewer described “Look Down In Mercy” as being ponderous, and I’d have to agree, however, I think that’s part of what makes the book so effective and why it leaves such a strong impact - the fact that you’re on this long, treacherous journey with Kent every step of the way. And you FEEL it as you’re reading, it’s exhausting! You’re there with him through it all, the fighting, marching, waiting, fear, starvation, killing, sickness, boredom. Nothing is glossed over (well, except the sex, but come, it was 1951!!!).

Kent and Anson’s growing relationship wasn’t sentimental in any way, shape or form, and I really like that there was so little dialogue between the two. Conversation wasn't how the author showed their bond and how it progressed. He showed it through Kent and Anson simply being together, surrounded by outside circumstances: catastrophe, malice and violence. Even near the end of the novel when they’re saying goodbye, there’s a nurse in the room, keeping them from saying anything truly meaningful. For me, they didn’t need words in order for the reader (or at least me) to see their intimacy grow, it was their actions and the outside circumstances of war that pushed them closer and closer together, both emotionally and physically.

“Sometimes as they lay awake waiting for the twilight of dawn Kent would feel his blood stir, and he would draw closer to Anson and touch his face with his fingers. But it was done subconsciously, his mind already walking away down the track, wondering if the coming day would mean waterless stretches, or whether they might perhaps reach the last ridge looking down on the plains and swamps surrounding Imphal. But he was well aware of the pleasure that came from Anson’s company and he refused all the suggestions made to him by other groups of refugees that passed them, civilians and soldiers, that he should join their parties and share their blankets. Their hardships and the months they had spent together, hardly out of each other’s sight, had bound them by ties far stronger than either of them understood, and they had reached a stage of intimacy when the presence of other people made them feel strange and awkward."

Another comment I’ve read about the book is that aside from Kent, the other characters are dull or two-dimensional. I like what Gregory Woods had to say in the Valancourt introduction, how Goodwin and Anson ARE a bit two dimensional, but the former is all “bad” and the latter all “good” - they’re different sides of the same (gay) coin. And ultimately, this is Kent’s story, he’s front and center. As Woods also said, “The real power of this novel comes from Baxter’s willingness to develop a central character who is morally ambiguous even to the extent of being thoroughly compromised.”

   

Quote: Ko was born Ko Untae in Gunsan, North Jeolla Province in 1933. He was at Gunsan Middle School when war broke out.


The Korean War emotionally and physically traumatized Ko and caused the death of many of his relatives and friends. Ko's hearing suffered from acid that he poured into his ears during an acute crisis in this time and it was further harmed by a police beating in 1979. In 1952, before the war had ended, Ko became a Buddhist monk. After a decade of monastic life, he chose to return to the active, secular world in 1962 to become a devoted poet. From 1963 to 1966 he lived on Jejudo, where he set up a charity school, and then moved back to Seoul. His life was not calm in the outer world, and he wound up attempting suicide (a second time) in 1970.

Around the time the South Korean government attempted to curb democracy by putting forward the Yusin Constitution in late 1972, Ko became very active in the democracy movement and led efforts to improve the political situation in South Korea, while still writing prolifically and being sent to prison four times (1974, 1979, 1980 and 1989). In May 1980, during the coup d'etat led by Chun Doo-hwan, Ko was accused of treason and sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment. He was released in August 1982 as part of a general pardon.

After his release, his life became calmer; however, he startled his large following by revising many of his previously published poems. Ko married Sang-Wha Lee on May 5, 1983, and moved to Anseong, Gyeonggi-do, where he still lives. He resumed writing and began to travel, his many visits providing fabric for the tapestry of his poems.

   

Quote: A review of Cry to Heaven.

During the eighteenth century, about four thousand Italian boys were castrated before puberty.  They were then trained until they could sing with the power and tonal richness of a baritone combined with the range of pitch of a soprano or alto.  The most successful of these “castrati” became the stars of their age, performing in operas in all the great cities of Europe, showered with gold by royalty and nobility and often sought in bed by the great of both sexes.  Through the story of one Tonio Treschi, a Venetian aristocrat with superlatively good looks and voice, castrated through treachery at fifteen, Anne Rice has brought to brilliant and convincing life the world of these “children mutilated to make a choir of seraphim, their voice a cry to heaven that heaven did not hear.”  


I was bound eventually to read this due to what it has in common with my favourite novel, Mary Renault’s The Persian Boy.  The latter was presumably the main inspiration for Rice choosing a boy eunuch as her main protagonist, since she has said it “profoundly influenced me as a writer” and Renault was “my writing teacher whom I never knew” (to which I say “me too”).  Both women write beautifully and evocatively, Rice’s prose being lusher but less lucid.  Both give meticulous attention to historical authenticity, which I think indispensable for historical novels.  The only flaw I noticed in this respect was the marriage of Carlo Treschi to his step-mother: it is inconceivable he could have got a dispensation for it, and there is no suggestion that her marriage to his father had been annulled.

Evidently massive and painstaking research into eunuchs, eighteenth-century musical training and the great Italian cities of the time was done to achieve this resurrection of a long-forgotten type of human life, and equally considerable imagination has gone into recreating the castrati’s emotions.  Much of Rice’s deeper learning could easily pass unnoticed by the uninformed reader, being woven into the story rather than explained.  A critically important example is the much higher age at which puberty was then reached.  Boys’ voices were not expected to break until they were eighteen. Tonio was still barely pubescent at fifteen, though this had not held him back from experiencing abundant “dry” joy in the beds of a tavern girl and a motherly cousin.

The choice of subject matter obviously sets the story up as especially promising ground for exploration of gender identity and sexuality, and by infusing the story with plenty of eros, Rice far from disappoints.  “What in God’s name did they hack away from you that you have laid a siege to the beds of Rome as great as that of the barbarian hordes?” Tonio is asked by the disappointed orchestrator of the theft of his testicles.  The answer is little if anything except the means to procreate, which should not surprise anyone except those labouring under the delusion that pre-pubescent boys are asexual. The castrati are presented as in one respect enjoying an enviable sexual freedom: they can sleep with females without danger of causing pregnancy, while their androgeneity opens possibilities with males. Tonio also enjoys complete freedom from the constraints and unnecessary sense of contradiction that dubious assumptions about fixed orientation impose on people today.  With men, he adopts the passive role automatically and fully relishes its physical and emotional joys; with a more feminine boy and later a girl, he equally automatically and happily plays the man.  I found all this thoroughly convincing.

The plot is fine and credible except that I found its central premise a bit implausible.  The atrocity against Tonio was evidently very risky for its perpetrator, who was frightened with good reason that people would not believe the lies put about that it was Tonio’s choice.  Tonio was given every opportunity for exacting immediate revenge through the law, but instead went out of his way to confirm the lies, and chose to wait four years during which he lived always under the dark cloud of unexacted revenge.  The explanation given, that he wanted the man who had cruelly wrecked his life to have time to beget sons to continue their family line, feels simply inadequate for a boy in Tonio’s horrific predicament. I also found the story sometimes too drawn out.  

Nevertheless, these are minor flaws in a deeply imaginative and haunting story.  The three of Tonio’s liaisons that are love affairs are moving, especially the greatest and final one with the beautiful English girl-painter Christina.  Above all though, it is the imagined sound of the beautiful, free-spirited boy troubador echoing in exquisite song along the canals and alleys of night-time Venice which continues to ring in my ears.

   

Quote:3

A young man approached the reception desk at
Taree Base Hospital. “Good morning,” the attendant
said with a practiced smile, then asked what she could
do for him. But the young man remained silent. “I’m
sorry. Is there a problem? Are you able to speak?” she
continued.
To the woman’s surprise, the young man then
mimicked her words. “What can I do for you? I’m
sorry. Is there a problem? Can you speak?”
“Oh, God, we’ve got a bit of a lulu here,” she
mumbled under her breath, then picked up a phone.
“Can you ask the head nurse to come to reception,
please. Yes, it’s urgent.” The receptionist replaced the
phone in its cradle. “Take a seat, please,” she said to
the young man. “You’ll be attended to shortly.”
“Take a seat please. You’ll be attended to
shortly,” he repeated.
“Over there.” She pointed to a row of chairs in
the corner of the room. “Take a seat over there.”
The young man’s eyes followed the direction of
the attendant’s finger. He thought for a moment, then
seemed to comprehend her request. “Take a seat over
there?” he asked as he mimicked a squatting motion
and pointed to the chairs.
“Yes, sit down over there.”