Ceremonies

By Dwight Cathcart

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0914852175
• ISBN13: 9780914852179
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: Calamus Books
• Length: 521 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Diversity of voices gives human face to political issues

CEREMONIES is a big, ambitious book. It takes place in the mid-80s, and is one of the best accounts I've read of the changes in the gay movement particular to those years, changes that have repercussions today. And because it takes place in a small town in Maine, it focuses, in a way I haven't often encountered in gay-themed fiction, on how those changes affected people living outside of the major cities. The Matthew Shepherd-like murder that is the central event of the story isn't actually what CEREMONIES is about-in fact, it's quickly (though horrifically) dispensed with in the Prologue. The book is really about the reactions to this murder by a very diverse group of people who have the fact of their sexual preference in common, but often not much else; they are very far from being a community. The story is told by half a dozen or more narrators, some "in", some "out". They include an emotionally disturbed boy who was friends with the murdered man; a very proper widowed school teacher who has always hidden her feelings about women; an actor who is in town for the summer; a young lesbian couple who are raising a son together; and-to me, most movingly-the staunch, older New England types who have lived their whole lives in Cardiff, Maine, and arrived at a degree of comfort in living with their secret, a comfort they now find threatened. While CEREMONIES is a study of how a community slowly and painfully forms out of a group of individuals, and a lot of fairly subtle political issues are raised and thoughtfully discussed, what gives it real depth is this diversity of voices. Cathcart makes them all believable and three-dimensional, not only the more sympathetic characters but those who are not so sympathetic as well. None of them feels like an example or a type, they're all unique personalities, with their own flaws, troubles, eccentricities, and senses of humor. That makes the issues raised not just dry, political-journal matters, but facts that real people deal with in their daily lives, each in his or her own way, often with passion, sadness and some really convincing (and moving) moments of revelation and celebration. I would recommend CEREMONIES especially to younger gay people who may not identify as strongly as some of us middle-agers with the concerns and struggles of twenty years ago, and to straight readers who might enjoy a break from the one or two stereotyped gay characters that appear so often in mainstream fiction.