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| Home > Reads > "Light before Day" by Christopher Rice |
| "Light before Day" by Christopher Rice | | Date Created: Apr 12, 2005, 10:12 AM |
It must be hard to be Anne Rice's son. Especially if you're Anne Rice's gay son. I mean, think about it, your Mom wrote a bunch of novels about guys who suck on other guys, one of which was made into a movie staring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. That sets a pretty high standard for your gay life.
But frankly, as I'm not really a fan of her writing, it doesn't set a very high standard if you've decided to be Ann Rice's gay writer son.
In his latest book, Christopher Rice attempts to show that he's trying to move out from under Mom's shadow. (Yes, I meant to write that sentence that way. I think he wrote this book, and picked the plot precisely to redefine his writing.) His first two books were both set in New Orleans and had a gothic mystery feel -- lots of moonlit nights and spanish moss and graveyards. Even if they didn't contain any vampires, they were still books by Anne Rice's gay son. This book, also a mystery, abandons the spanish moss and corpses of New Orleans for the sunshine and corpses of California's central valley. ("See?" young Christopher seems to be saying, "I'm not just Anne Rice's gay son!!")
If you've been reading my book reviews long enough, you might remember how sick I am of gay fiction that contains a main character from LA or NYC who is a drug addled screenwriter. I'm sorry to say this is number 34 (at least!) on that list. OK, to be fair, he's not a screenwriter. He's a "journalist" for a gay bar rag. He lives in LA and is an alcoholic cokehead, not a tweeker. But still...
Gay fiction really came into its own with the "Coming Out Novel." It then moved on, in the 80's to the "AIDS Novel." I've read several essays recently where people are speculating on the next trend in gay fiction. Most of these essayists contend that there is no apparent trend. I contend that these essayists are gay tweeker-screenwriters from LA or NYC, and thus can't see that the trend is the novel about the gay tweeker-screenwriter from LA or NYC.
The "Coming Out Novel" and the "AIDS Novel" contained themes that were fairly universal in their appeal, at least in the gay community. Though not every gay man has come out, and not every gay man has AIDS, these are facts of gay life that can touch the reader anyway.
Many of us poor slobs in the Midwest have a harder and harder time identifying with the gay tweeker-screenwriter from LA or NYC culture. No, my head is not buried in my ass ... I am well aware of how popular crystal is in the midwest, and that the American Capitol of Crystal is probably somewhere in Nebraska. However, the "Coming Out Novel" or the "AIDS Novel" typically moved beyond the act of coming out, or the details of daily life with AIDS to discuss the broader impacts on the lives of the protagonist and his family, friends, society -- even the country. The gay tweeker-screenwriter from LA or NYC novel basically spends its time talking about the effects of crystal on the user as they walk aimlessly around NYC (or drive around LA). There's the requisite description of the protagonist attempting to dig bugs out from under his skin, for example. That's it, though. They rarely go further.
And once again, I'd like to say that in fact, there are some gay people who do not live in NYC or LA, and just once in a while we might like to read a book about our lives. If you absolutely must write a book about tweeking, I'm sure you can find one or two people to write about in the Midwest. I'm sure our pathetic fly-over lives can't possibly be as exciting as the lives of the cute, hip, and tweeking in NYC and LA, but we enjoy them.
Anyway, enough bitching. Back to the book. The "journalist" protagonist is trying to stay clean and sober while investigating an apparent gay bashing, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," several murders, a couple suicides, a gay child-porn ring, a series of meth-lab "accidents", and a gay vigilante ... all of which end up connected.
Sound ambitious? It is. Too ambitious for Rice to pull off.
I can understand that he wants to get out of his Mother's shadow. But this novel feels like it just got away from him. The convoluted plot is designed to keep you guessing, but it feels like it kept Rice guessing while he wrote it. The best mystery writers insert a red-herring here and there to keep you interested, but when the truth is revealed, you don't feel cheated. Rice hasn't quite got the writing chops to pull that off yet.
Rice should have also chosen one major "issue" to deal with and left it there. Crystal Meth? Child Porn? By bringing both into the story, neither gets any real time for development as an "issue", and therefore gets almost no commentary. Given the gay world he creates, it seems to me that the epidemic of crystal meth would have been the natural choice. Though he spends some time with the characters and their addictions, he never has the time to explore the implications on their lives, other than the physical symptoms of addiction. I'm not saying I think this book should have been some sort of self-help book, but a more realistic portrayal of crystal meth addiction could have been portrayed if he hadn't spent so much time with a convoluted plot consisting of almost 20 characters.
It will be interesting to see how Rice's writing develops as he continues to mature. Though I don't have high praise for this book, I do think it is a better effort than his first two books. |
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