Red X
Ratings9
Average rating3.8
A hunted community. A haunted author. A horror that spans centuries.
Men are disappearing from Toronto's gay village. They're the marginalized, the vulnerable. One by one, stalked and vanished, they leave behind small circles of baffled, frightened friends. Against the shifting backdrop of homophobia throughout the decades, from the HIV/AIDS crisis and riots against raids to gentrification and police brutality, the survivors face inaction from the law and disinterest from society at large. But as the missing grow in number, those left behind begin to realize that whoever or whatever is taking these men has been doing so for longer than is humanly possible.
Woven into their stories is David Demchuk's own personal history, a life lived in fear and in thrall to horror, a passion that boils over into obsession. As he tries to make sense of the relationship between queerness and horror, what it means for gay men to disappear, and how the isolation of the LGBTQ+ community has left them profoundly exposed to monsters that move easily among them, fact and fiction collide and reality begins to unravel.
A bold, terrifying new novel from the award-winning author of The Bone Mother.
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There are some interesting concepts here and the subject matter is important, but this book just didn't really work for me. I'm not sure if listening to this as an audiobook affected my enjoyment, but I found the writing to be mostly unengaging (except for some of the supernatural stuff) and the characters felt underdeveloped.
I was also made uncomfortable by the depictions of sexual violence, which obviously is the intent and that's fine, but what bothered me more is that since that is an ever-present aspect of the book, whenever there is a non-violent sexual description, I was immediately put off and since they are all homosexual encounters it made me feel a sort of weird guilt as well for feeling that way.
The demonic presence that threads throughout the story is pretty effectively unnerving though, and the sort-of fourth wall breaking interstitials are something I really like in theory, but didn't quite fit into the story as much as I would have liked.
This seems like it's close to something that could have been great and I can understand the high reviews for it, but as it is I wouldn't personally recommend it.
I don't want to spoil many of my thoughts since I'll be discussing in book club. I'll just say enjoyed it, but it did make some storytelling choices that really hampered my enthusiasm. Can't wait to talk about it. Might be closer to a 3.5/5?
I'm having a hard time organizing what I want to say about this book. I think it's one of these books that will hold a special place in my heart and it's always harder to speak about the things we love than about the things we hate isn't it?
This book spoke my language, if that makes any sense, and I loved it for it. It's both a very Canadian older queer story and a commentary on horror and queerness perfect for the non-fiction reader taking a detour into fiction.
