This month’s Across the Page features books by noteworthy independent presses: Red Audrey and the Roping, by Jill Malone (Bywater Books); Family Outing, by Troy Johnson (Arcade); and Another Love, by Erzsébet Galgóczi (Midnight Editions).
Red Audrey and the Roping by Jill Malone (Bywater Books)
Jill Malone’s debut novel, Red Audrey and the Roping, is an absolutely gripping and beautifully written story about a woman struggling to figure out how her past reflects her present life and future.
Jane Elliot is in the hospital recovering from a serious head injury. Though she has been there for several weeks, no family or friends have come to claim or visit her and the circumstances of the accident that landing her there are vague at best.
The novel opens with a meeting between Jane and her psychologist, Dr. Mya, and then journeys back to the events that led up to the accident. For unknown reasons, Jane resists the team of doctors working on her case and trying to learn more about her life.
As the story unfolds, Jane is forced to come to terms with her haunting past – both distant and immediate. She has recently returned to Hawaii after abandoning a stable and loving relationship with a woman in Ireland by leaving a “Dear Jane” letter. She is still grieving the childhood loss of her mother, a gifted storyteller who suffered from mental illness and eventually took her own life.
“If my mind would sort properly, I could explain,” Jane thinks at one point, and indeed she has plenty to figure out. In her recovery, Malone carefully weaves together several narrative strands, each of which are intriguing enough to fill an entire novel.
Nearly every aspect of Jane’s life is binary. She teaches Latin at the University of Hawaii and surfs. She is bisexual. She seeks people to take care of her, including best friends Grey and Emily, but is also a masochist who allows her new sadist boyfriend, Nick, to leave welts so deep she can barely sit back in a chair.
Audrey is the one character who is finally able to break through to Jane – primarily because she is unwilling to accept Jane’s disengagement and unrest. Though Jane’s recovery in the hospital is centered on her physical injuries, the process of memory and the literal act of telling her story forces her to confront her past and to see exactly how it has shaped her present.
Malone is an extremely talented storyteller and Red Audrey and the Roping is a magnificent debut. The novel is accomplished on nearly every level – engaging characters, lyrical prose, and a mystery that is certain to keep you turning the pages. If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to read more – or at all – this is the perfect book to pick up and devour.
Another Love by Erzsébet Galgóczi (Midnight Editions)
When Eva Szalánczky is shot and killed while trying to cross the border from Soviet controlled Hungary to Yugoslavia, Lieutenant Marosi recognizes her immediately.
Though they essentially work on opposite sides of the communist regime – he as a border patrol and she as a dissident journalist – he was in love with her back when they were classmates in school.
Eva is a lesbian and Marosi’s love for her was torturous and unrequited. Nonetheless, he is compelled to unravel the mystery of her death and to find out whether it was suicide or murder. Why did she not ask for his help to cross the border? And, if she was murdered, was it connected to her political activities or her reckless behavior surrounding the love of a straight woman named Livia whose husband was unpredictable and violent?
Marosi soon learns that there are no easy answers. Eva describes herself as “a mistake of nature” to a Major who was investigating Livia’s husband for attempted murder. When Marosi interviews the Major as part of his own investigation, he is faced with a challenge: “Maybe you’ll find out, or maybe you already know why Eva Szalánczky’s life went downhill. What are you going to do with that knowledge?”
Marosi doesn’t skip a beat. In many ways he understands that Eva’s story is connected to his own. “To every belief I had, she put a question mark…Possibly, I can free myself of her now, can close a door that had been left open. But not in relation to the future, only in relation to the past. It doesn’t pay to look back.”
But a letter that Marosi found in Eva’s handbag drives him forward: “There is no explanation. One cuts open one’s veins…Someone else comes along who will explain it.” Convinced that he is that “someone,” Marosi continues to examine Eva’s life and the circumstances that led to her death. What emerges is the story of a woman with equal amounts courage and fear.
There are many similarities between Eva and Galgóczi’s life. An accomplished writer and journalist, Galgóczi’s early support of the Communist Party turned critical and she was a controversial figure as the General Secretary of the Hungarian Writers’ Union.
In a compelling essay at the end of the book, Ines Rieder places Eva and Galgóczi’s lesbianism in context to the political and historic issues of Hungary during this post World War II era. It’s worth reading before you begin the novel.
Family Outing by Troy Johnson (Arcade)
Troy Johnson was ten years old when his mother’s best friend, who he calls “Tattle Dyke,” sat him down and said, “Your mom is a homosexual.” Though he wasn’t exactly sure what the word meant, or its implications, he knew enough that it wasn’t good news.
In the opening of Johnson’s memoir, Family Outing, the story of growing with a lesbian mom, he includes an author’s note entitled “Before I Offend You.” In the note, Johnson does not offer a disclaimer as much as perspective. Growing up in California with his mother, whom he loved with a “deep, atomic love” that is both believable and clear, Johnson was admittedly confused and ashamed of her sexuality.
This was, he reminds the reader, during the Reagan era and before it was common to see two mom families in the neighborhood or on the television. Though he tried to find information, comfort and reflection, more often he came across “psychobabble about ’embracing our differences’ and ‘disarming our bigotries.'” That’s all well and good, Johnson concedes, but there’s more.
Family Outing is Johnson’s attempt to provide the “real story,” and in it he reveals “skeletons I thought I wouldn’t even tell priests. On my death bed. At gunpoint.”
In fact, those secrets take on a certain confessional quality that’s admirable and insightful. Johnson’s skeletons expose a range of experiences and emotions, including: when he was a teenager and denied his mother the right to be affectionate with her lover (“Tattle Dyke” was long gone) in her own home; a dependence on alcohol and sex – often unprotected and unemotional – to prove his own heterosexuality; overusing the word “fag” and “gay” to compensate for his insecurity; and spending a month in a psych ward after threatening to commit suicide.
Things change in Johnson’s thinking when he is forced to undergo “sensitivity training” after screaming “fag” at an RA in his dorm at college. For too long he has justified his homophobic behavior by announcing that his mom is a lesbian, but after watching a film about a young man who is terrorized for being gay he finally acknowledges his mother’s struggle.
As part of his recovery, Johnson experiments with some interesting identities. He becomes a born-again Christian. He joins a fraternity. Neither hat fits, however, and eventually he begins to settle into a typical liberal college student whose journey is like many others: to discover his own path. In the process, he embraces his mother and learns how to forgive himself.
If there is anything, it seems, that Johnson blames his mother for it is that she did not do enough to challenge his homophobia. It is a lesson he now takes seriously, whether it’s in confronting his less than accepting sister or father, or writing for the Gay and Lesbian Times in San Diego.
Johnson’s story is an important one and it is told with humor, honesty and, most importantly, love.
