The Sweet Flag by Jeanne Barrack – review

Rating:  

Ron Tayvail has guarded the grave of Matthew Hardesty for years. When he learns of Brandon’s interest in the legend of “The Vigilant Soldier”, he’s determined to dissuade him from any deeper investigation. He didn’t realize that he’d fall in love with the fellow on first sight. And yearn to become his lover. For always.

My Review: When this book was pitched for review, I jumped at the chance to read it, given that the subject matter is one of my favorites. However, as I prepared to write this review, I re-visited that publisher’s website and realized that what drew me to the book is not revealed in the publisher’s blurb. As revealing this aspect of the book would amount to a huge spoiler, I’ll dance around it as best as I can.

Let’s start with the positive. Despite a few cases of missing words and some formatting markings that managed to remain un-caught in the final PDF of the manuscript I received, Barrack’s prose is simple, clean, easy to read, and initially engaging. Likewise, the premise is intriguing. Brandon Keats is a gay man, an investigator of paranormal phenomena who hears the tale of Civil War soldier Matthew Hardesty’s grave being haunted every 20 years. After some extremely limited research, he comes to believe that Hardesty was gay and that the grave is being haunted by his former lover Aaron deMonde, one of France’s most promising young baritones who disappeared at the height of his career in 1856. Keats, believing he is on the right trail, stakes out Hardesty’s grave one night and, after setting up all the accoutrements of paranormal investigators, manages to fall asleep at the gravesite. When a ferocious storm wakes him, he is rescued by the enigmatic Ron Tayvail, an attractive man who is very clearly of French descent. Ron takes Keats back to his apartment and gets him cleaned up, revealing his attraction to the drenched investigator. He entices Keats to stay by revealing that he knows a lot about soldier Hardesty and his lover deMonde. But how exactly does he know it, and what exactly does Ron want with Keats?

There are a lot of elements here that have potential. A gay historical, paranormal romance that features not one but two love stories, that of Hardesty and deMonde and, taking place 152 years later, that of Keats and Ron. The problem is, this 100 page novella (double spaced) never spends any sufficient time with any of those elements to pull it together into the fascinating piece it could have been.

Initially, I was very intrigued. The Prologue, especially, made me think were in for a great ride, one that broke the conventions of traditional storytelling. Barrack sets up the Prologue as Keats tells how he stumbled onto this story and the results of his early investigations. This section, while not losing the personal voice of Keats, gives the piece a very non-fiction tone. Barrack even goes so far at to have Keats footnote his research (though, the formatting is not traditional footnoting). I was fascinated, waiting to see how Barrack would blend this intriguing story-telling conceit into a smooth story of two loves. I’ve seldom seen this device employed and thought it was a unique way to wrap a piece of fiction in the guise of academia. Unfortunately, Barrack jettisons this device immediately following the Prologue and resorts to a traditional (sort-of) story-telling format. Though a bit disappointed that this convention wasn’t followed through the whole book, I still found Barrack’s prose engaging and professional.

When Barrack brings investigator Keats and enigmatic Ron together, another aspect of the set up gets completely lost. I’ve been reading a lot of books lately where one of the protagonists (usually the first person narrator) is a “detective” or an “investigator” who, in actuality, seems to do very little detecting or investigating. Invariably, someone shows up and basically tells them everything they need to know and the result is that the “profession” of the narrator becomes nothing more that a plot device. It doesn’t serve to define them, drive them, create any depth of character. It is simply what the author needed to be to get the story rolling. And so it is here. Once Ron and Keats come together, any sense of Keats being a professional journalist specializing in paranormal activity is completely lost. Keats occasionally throws in some paranormal techno-babble just to remind us what he is, but mostly he is reduced to asking “What happened next?” as Ron relates the tragic story of Hardesty and deMonde.

And herein lies the basic problem that moves The Sweet Flag from initially intriguing to uniquely frustrating. The entire story becomes Ron telling Hardesty and deMonde’s story to Keats. So, the first person narration of Keats, becomes the first person narration of Ron, who is telling a story he has ostensibly learned second hand. The novella quickly becomes trying when you realize this isn’t going to change and that you have 70 more pages to go. In short, there is no “show” here, but there is a ton of “tell,” that is complicated by the telephone-game aspect of the structure.

Occasionally we do get breaks within the storytelling so that Ron and Keats can have sex, and even then Barrack resorts to characters telling us information about themselves rather than showing us by their actions. As an example, Ron says to Keats at one point, “No way. I’m the alpha. Take off your pants.” The result is that the sex is yet another structure/plot point that quickly becomes bland.

Story.

Sex scene.

Story.

Sex Scene.

Story.

Sex Scene.

The entire novella progresses this way. This might have worked (or at least been less obvious) had Barrack chosen another way to convey the Civil war era story of Hardesty and deMonde. It might have worked if Ron didn’t convey the love story in the broadest possible strokes. We never really get to know Hardesty and deMonde and therefore we end up not caring. Likewise, there is little to differentiate Ron from Keats, other than Ron is French and occasionally uses French phrases, a trick that really doesn’t give us anything except an air of pretension (that drops away for the occasional “fuck me”). The two storytellers essentially become plot devices to tell another story. The result is that, although we are told through Keat’s narration of a developing connection/love between him and Ron, we never really feel it because the characters never develop into anything more than sketches.

Barrack does occasionally veer into areas that could have been fascinating had she followed the paths. Hardesty’s possible connection to Walt Whitman (from whom the title of the novella is derived) and his “Calamus” poems was a nice addition that, in and of itself, could probably been an interesting novella. If the story of Hardesty and DeMonde been told on its own, without the involvement of Ron or Keats, the piece could have been engaging. There’s even a hint of civil war era mixed parentage that could have been mined and refined to add depth, and the fact that both Keats and Ron are of Jewish descent could have been a fascinating story, especially given the “twist” ending. Alas, any time I thought the piece might go off in an interesting direction, it got dropped. As for the “twist” ending that I won’t reveal, I think most readers will see it coming a mile away, if not within the fist 10 pages. Again, the “twist” serves simply as a structure device to bookend the story and really has little to do with the characters or the focus of the story.

In short, reading this novella, I was reminded of when a friend just has to tell you the funniest/cutest/most hilarious story they’ve ever heard. They spend 10 minutes telling you what so-and-so did and what so-and-so said and what so-and-so must have thought, and then they reach the end of the story. And you stand there shrugging, only to have your friend say “I guess you had to be there.” Well, I guess you had to.