Title: What the Dead Remember Author: Harlan Greene Published by: Dutton, 1991 ISBN: 0-525-93378-6 [hardcover , 180 pages]
"I met him that summer, too, and it's hard to believe in light of what happened that I gave up my dreams for him." The boy met by the unnamed narrator of this moving, chilling novel of sexual awakening, desire, and death is Stevie, a mentally retarded fifteen-year-old. The setting is Charleston. And the dreams are erotic, irresistible, and forbidden in this remarkable novel about gay life in the South by Harlan Greene.In his first summer in Charleston, the narrator is a chubby, awkward thirteen-year-old just beginning to understand his longings and himself. He stares at ads of boys in BVDs, he gazes at the handsome teenagers swimming on the Carolina beach, and he fantasizes about being powerful, admired, and loved. But at home with his aging aunt and uncle, he's a tormented, unhappy child, often mean and ill-tempered . . . until he meets Stevie. Responding to Stevie's innocence and unconditional love, the narrator begins to accept himself and to enjoy a summer that would leave him with golden memories of perfect days and nights.
But all this changes when he returns to Charleston the next year. The love he finds then is harsher, more passionate, and far from innocent. Stevie is no longer the only focus of his life, for now he has steamy, dangerous afternoons of sex and thrills with the very boys he once dreamed about. When he leaves Charleston that second summer, he never expects to return. It is this mistaken belief that proves to be his ultimate downfall.
Harlan Green's lush, brilliantly written story haunts us with its final twist, and with a narrator whose unflinching honesty conjures up memories of an imperfect adolescence and an inescapable vulnerability to a lover's lies.
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