Best Gay Contemporary General Fiction: Listening To Dust by Brandon Shire

[reviews_and_ramblings]

This novel is short and yet immense; it’s deeply romantic but so tragic; it’s about regenerating love and devastating death.

I don’t want to give out much about the novel, and in the end you will learn everything, even too much, right at the beginning, but be prepared to read about the love and loss of Englishman Stephen and his American lover Dustin. When Dustin fell in love with Stephen, he was completely unprepared, no one has ever loved him if not his handicapped brother Robbie and an old school teacher, Miss Emily. But loving Stephen, in a faraway country from his conservative Southern small town meant leaving behind those two people, and for Dustin leaving Robbie was not an option.

It broke my heart when Dustin left Stephen, but indeed the organ was already damaged, because the author chooses a narrative plot that starts from the end to going back to the beginning, and so the reader already knows what is the fate of Dustin and Stephen. In a way, the author is not deceiving anyone, he is not letting you hope in an happily ever after, and so you can concentrate on the rough feelings you are experiencing reading the novel, like voluntarily spreading salt on an open wound, you know it will hurt but maybe that sudden pain will be more bearable than the continuous aching.

Amazon: Listening To Dust
Amazon Kindle: Listening To Dust
Paperback: 142 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (March 21, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1470181290
ISBN-13: 978-1470181291



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Comments

[engarian.livejournal.com]

So I finished this one a day or so ago. I found it difficult to get into at first because of the dialect, but forced myself through because the language was so well done. There were parts in the book that left me totally breathless - beauty of words and construct that stopped me short. There is no HEA here, but it is well worth the read just to admire the construction of the language and the relationship between the characters as expressed and remembered in one short hour-long period of time. This one will stay with me for a while.

- Erulisse (one L)