Giovanni's room
Ratings106
Average rating4.4
This is the only book I have ever read that I could describe as perfect. Every single word belongs and every sentence made my heart break a little bit more. How could a single story hurt so much? How do I begin to recover from it? I don't know if I ever will.
Baldwin's prose is gorgeous and his work terrifyingly thought-provoking. I am not an highlighting man but I would have highlighted this entire book had I been able to put it down long enough or to see through my tears.
I've had my fair share of anxious-avoidant men who stand for nothing, so they fall for everything...
Stunning. Magnificent. Easily one of the greatest books I have ever read.
This is the story of a man in search of himself who keeps all those he loves, or wants to love, at arms length and the consequences that follow. It's a story of the same internal struggles with which we all contend. A tortured tale beautifully rendered by James Baldwin.
Devastating and beautiful, it is incredible that Baldwin was able to get this published in the 1950s. An intense and vulnerable examination of sexuality, masculinity, and how damn confusing and confounding life can be when you're young! A book everyone should read in their late teens or early twenties as they try to figure out themselves, their relationships, and their place in the world.
Buddy read with @glitterpricked
Queer literary fiction taking place in 1950s Paris where David, a young American, waiting for his fiancée Hella to come back from Spain, meets Giovanni, an Italian barman and starts an abrupt and passionate affair with him.
This short but powerful book was an incredible dense read, dealing with themes about queerness, shame, homophobia, masculinity, misogyny, social conformity. James Baldwin delivers each line with a sharp and compelling tone. Each line written felt experienced and personal, as he truly understands the characters and infuses them with his own story as a queer man who lived during that era in Paris.
Both David and Giovanni are flawed and complex characters, the author perfectly described the intricacy of someone dealing with their sexuality, gender identity, their internalised bigotry in a conventional society. Yet living in a society that condemns, if not legally, then morally, that queerness, the two characters find themselves in Giovanni's room, a place of liberation and love, where they can be themselves and not having to be in a state of self deception.
The dichotomy between the two, is shown literally: Giovanni is a passionate, solar being, who search for a true emotional connection but is utterly unable to live alone. He also shows himself as a very traditional Italian, with a patriarchal and misogynistic attitude. David on the other hand, displays moment of selfishness, denial and impassiveness. His struggle with his sexuality and sense of self, his shame and self loathing, his struggle with his masculinity, his inability to accept love, dating back to his unhappy youth, did softens his flaws, making him a interesting character. Metaphorically I also noted this opposition between the two is shown throughout different references in the book ( for example Judas/Jesus or innocence/guilt).
Sometimes it felt as David saw himself in Giovanni, or as his mirror image, specifically the passages where he imagines what Giovanni is doing, it felt like he was living through them.
Their secretive, whole consuming passion (une passion dévorante as we say in French), in addition to Hella's impending return and other various problems (money, unemployment, dubious relationships), makes the tension slowly escalate and the author perfectly describes this mounting dread that slowly eats away at both characters until it explodes into a tragic finale.
This book felt very much like a photograph of its time yet it reminds us that today acceptance and respect are essential.
This review is a mess, a more capable reviewer will probably articulate better why this book is incredible, yet I feel with this book I felt I experienced more than I read it.
It's unfair to judge this book by today's standards, but that being said, the unsolicited critism of femininity and straight-up transphobia is jarring. It's hard to believe that this book was seen as a controversial book just cause it has gay stuff.
About a guy who ends up in a gay relationship while cheating on his girlfriend. Kind of melancholy (tbh really melancholy) but good at the same time?
Good book, but I didn't connect with the characters well. Some parts were great, others dragged for me.
This is a story about a very sad and ugly subject, but written with an honesty and rawness that adds some kind of deeper pathos.
This was my first time reading James Baldwin's fiction, having previously only read his essays, nonfiction, and seen interviews/speeches. He is eloquent as ever but his eloquence and insight is held up as a mirror to a protagonist who is drawn into harmful and cruel behaviours due to his dishonesty with himself and fear of his attraction to men. This is a novel about masculinity and internalised homophobia and how it can eat you from the inside. The story illustrates how the process of internalised hate prevents a person from loving and destroys the lives of the ones around them. Like I said, ugly and sad subject, but as you'd expect from Baldwin, his perspicuity and insight mean it is a nuanced portrayal.
You won't like the first person narration from our protagonist, David: he's misogynistic, transphobic, fatphobic and classist. I guess a realistic portrayal given David is a white American man of the 1950s. Prepare yourself to be exposed to these 1950s attitudes. But it's probably the best portrayal of internalised homophobia you'll ever read. And these externalised behaviours are a great illustration of how hatred of difference and desire for normalcy is at its roots, disconnection, fear, and denial of self.
There are moments of beauty in the descriptions of intimacy, and I did jot down a few very quotable phrases. It's four stars for the quality of writing, but three stars for how rotten the protagonist made me feel.
Quite astonishing really that so much beauty and so much pain can be found in just 150 pages. I found it hard to feel any kind of sympathy for David, I knew somebody like him. They like to dipped their toes into the queer pool, enjoy the freedom and the excitement but when things start getting a little serious, when possible commitment beckons they flee leaving a trail of emotional destruction in their wake, back their safe lives just like in this book and with devastating consequences. If ever a book were to be described as timeless, it is this one.
I starter reading this in June, but found it very difficult to get through. Turns out the text is very small and I needed reading glasses. I now have them, and can read the text without problem.
My biggest impression of this book is that I despise David. He cheats on his girlfriend with Giovanni, then cheats on Giovanni with a girl he doesn't even like, and hurts all three in the process.
I wasn't expecting a happy ending, of course, but I also wasn't expecting the main character to be so horrible.
Giovanni's Room has become a litmus test for how emotionally I am in touch with myself. A book about an inability to love, an impossible relationship; for a long time I couldn't read past a few pages without my stomach in roiling knots. Last summer I could feel love, then winter came and with it as usual the clarity of grief. You can be delusional every time you go through this cycle, because romance is a shared delusion, but at one point we all have to confront the fragility and impermanence of love. Love through the lens of freedom or stability, youth or age, compatibility or incompatibility. That's what this book will give you. Every word was a gut-punch too close to home for a while. When Spring came and one could pretend the leaves were falling off their trees to greet you at exactly the right moment, I finally had the stomach to finish this heart-breaking book. Remember to tell your lover how much you love them while you still can.
I don't think any review of mine could do this book justice. Baldwin's intelligence is so provoking and his sentences so elegant that words will most definitely fail me. He says in a single paragraph what most books fail to say in a hundred pages and there are many such paragraphs in the book.
This book started off so strong but it lost me at the last third of the story.
I had also not expected the amount of sexism and weird comments towards women that it had.
Things like: ‘he's a corporation lawyer and she's just the little woman.'
‘It's that you've got me. So now I can be - your obedient and most loving servant.'
‘I felt her moving, rushing to open the gates of her strong, walled city and let the king of glory come in.'
Which comes first: self-hatred or being a hateful person? Does one feed (or feed on) the other? And how does shame act as a catalyst in this toxic reaction?
Beautifully written, infuriating, moving, heartbreaking. The narrator is so loathsome (in a Gatsbyesque way) that I found myself in awe at Baldwin's sensitivity: to write someone like that, to take us in his self-justifying head and culture and era, to draw us in despite our dislike – that takes skill. It was an unusual experience and has lingered with me for some days.
I first thought this was a period piece, that our world has progressed since then... halfway through I realized my mistake. These characters are timeless: their fears, desires, insecurities, self-absorption; their pettiness and inability to communicate with or listen to one another; and yes, the oppressive mantle of shame inherited from our culture – I don't think we've outgrown those yet.
Short Review: Baldwin's writing is incredible. Lyrical and moving. I really did not like his characters. They were childish, selfish and unwilling to actually work on relationships. This is yet another book where I see the real skill of the author, but can't really recommend the book.
My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/giovannis-room/