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Gay Fiction
Condition: Good Boards (black): some marks and damage to edges and crushing to corners; wear worst at top and bottom of spine. Book leans forward slightly. Front endpapers: browning, binding loosening. Rear endpapers: browning, pencil inscriptions, partly torn off sticker, binding torn. Pages generally clean but one or two with creases and small marks. Plot / Content: Birabeau's short novel is as much character study as narrative - the reaction of a mother who discovers that her eighteen-year-old son, who has just died, was gay. Madame Casseneuil (we never learn her first name) lives in a flat in a bourgeois neighbourhood of Paris. Her social life is limited to once a week when two acquaintances join her to play chamber music. So alone does she appear that when one of her fellow musicians proposes to her, he is surprised to learn that her husband - a foreign correspondent - is still alive. Indeed, although Madame Casseneuil loves her husband and enjoys the few days a year when he is home, her son Dominique is the focus of her life and the object of her adoration. As he has grown, she has filled a large album with photographs of the boy at every stage of his life from naked baby to handsome young man. Always, she has been proud of him, especially as he passed through adolescence, and unlike other boys of his age, he has remained pure, neither tempted by brothels nor fallen into early fatherhood. Dominique's one obsession was with motor cars, which he learnt to drive young. Before the book begins, he has left home to work for a car company him in Avignon. It is there where he dies in a car crash, and it is there where, sorting through her son's papers, that Madame Casseneuil discovers a love letter to him - a love letter from a man. SPOILER ALERT: the next two paragraphs give the later developments and ending of the novel. Skip to the review section below for a discussion of the book's style and relevance. Madame Casseneuil returns to Paris and tries to pick up the pieces of her life, but finds it impossible. Her husband rushes home but is unable to offer any comfort. She has within her a shameful secret that she cannot share with anyone, not even with him. As the days pass, almost unconsciously she comes to a decision. She knows has the name of her son's lover, even met him briefly in Avignon on the day she heard of his death. She buys a revolver, and takes the train to Avignon to seek him out. They exchange polite formalities, but as they talk, her resolve fades as she realises that one other person in the world loved Dominique as she did. She has a companion in her misery. He suggests she is tired and should come back another time to talk about her son. She agrees, her heart suddenly lighter. As she stands to go, she searches in her handbag for a handkerchief to dry her tears, inadvertently letting the packet of incriminating letters fall to the floor. He stoops to pick them up, recognises his own handwriting. "You knew?" he asks. "Yes," she replies, "I knew". "And you were coming again?" She answers, "Yes, I am coming again." Background / Biography: There is very little information about André Birabeau. French wikipedia identifies an André Birabeau (1890 - 1974) as a writer and playwright, but does not include any reference to novels. Una, Lady Troubridge was the lover of Radclyffe Hall, the author of the lesbian classic The Well of Loneliness; biographical details on wikipedia. Reviews: Revelation is not great literature. There is little story and much of the book is taken up with vignettes that digress from the basic plot (Monsieur Coquineau's proposal, another neighbour's complaining to the concierge about the musical evenings, Jean Casseneuil's vaguely defined work travel). Similarly, there is little depth of character. We get only a few glimpses of Dominique, which allow us to see him only a little more clearly than his mother does. Even Madame Casseneuil appears more a symbol of maternal grief than a woman in her own right. So, what is of interest? Firstly, Madame Casseneuil's love for her son. At first glance this appears to be smothering - in the public areas of her flat there no photos of her husband, only her child. Her thoughts are constantly turning to him. All his live she has worried about him. Yet it appears to have been an open, rather than smothering love. Unlike other mothers in stereotyped pictures of gay men, she never tried to control him. She did not forbid him to visit brothels, simply observed that he does not appear to have gone there. She hated his enthusiasm for cars, fearing an accident, but did not prevent him buying one. She wanted him to stay in Paris, but knew it was inevitable that he leave - and she let him leave without protest. Her reaction on discovering her son is gay - the turbulence and distraction which dominate the second half of the novel, and which leave it uncertain to the very end how she will bring closure to her grief - is natural given the time when Revelation was written. It is the physical act between two men which repels her, yet she herself has always enjoyed lovemaking - and it is that information, which partly explains her action on the last page - which is perhaps the novel's greatest strength. At the end of Revelation, it is true that a gay man has died, but it is also true that as a gay man he loved and was loved, and it was the strength of that love which Birabeau intended to be no less worthy than his mother's despair. Clicking on advertiser links on this site may allow these companies to gather and use information about your visit to this and other websites to provide you with advertisements about goods and services presumed to be of interest to you. |
Quote from this book "She had destroyed the letter. . . . She had remained alone with her secret. The minutes had passed, or had they been hours? At first she had still heard the murmur of the women's voices, stifled by the drawn curtain; she had not noticed when it ceased. Church bells had rung. She had remained motionless beside the fireplace in the corner to which she had retreated, as far as possible from the open drawers - motionless, but the marble chimney-piece had burnt her elbow, and her knees had trembled under her. Opposite her, over there, at the other end of the room on the wall, the naked body of Apollo stood out white against black - obscene. Scattered papers and an ignoble incense that rose momentarily more stifling. . . . Alone with her secret." pp105-106 Secondhand booksellers |
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