A review by thecommonswings
A Gay and Melancholy Sound by Merle Miller
5.0
Devastating. At first it feels like a slightly less whimsical version of things like the Robertson Davies’ Bildungsromans but it soon takes the reader into far darker, stranger and agonisingly melancholy territory.
I’ve read a couple of reviews that described the narrator as unlikeable and the narrative as constantly flitting about, and to that I ask how readers would suggest a book about a man who intensely hates himself and is beginning the slow process of killing himself would read? It’s agonisingly forensic in how detailed Miller goes into Bland’s narrative. It genuinely feels like a confessional - flailing in anger and frustration and loss like it does - and the more whimsical moments are definitely deliberately there because Bland is kidding himself about his past. Miller’s not that dumb a writer. And by the time the narrative begins to unravel into strange paranoid and almost surreal vignettes, which interestingly don’t fit into the narrative Bland is trying to control, the effect absolutely wipes you out
It’s also a book about PTSD, about nature versus nurture and - as Pearl wisely points out in her introduction- about self loathing covering someone’s real personality. Miller’s homosexuality doesn’t fully chime in with Bland’s narrative, but there are moments where the implications are very direct. It’s possibly the most awful evocation of self hatred within depression I have ever read. Every word feels true and particularly feels like Miller must have suffered every word, every sentence of this. I was horrified in a way I can truly say I haven’t been by a book in living memory. It’s a brutal masterpiece but I’m not entirely sure a book I could or can ever revisit
It’s astonishing. It’s horrible. It’s horrifying. It’s gut wrenching. It deserves to be a modern classic
I’ve read a couple of reviews that described the narrator as unlikeable and the narrative as constantly flitting about, and to that I ask how readers would suggest a book about a man who intensely hates himself and is beginning the slow process of killing himself would read? It’s agonisingly forensic in how detailed Miller goes into Bland’s narrative. It genuinely feels like a confessional - flailing in anger and frustration and loss like it does - and the more whimsical moments are definitely deliberately there because Bland is kidding himself about his past. Miller’s not that dumb a writer. And by the time the narrative begins to unravel into strange paranoid and almost surreal vignettes, which interestingly don’t fit into the narrative Bland is trying to control, the effect absolutely wipes you out
It’s also a book about PTSD, about nature versus nurture and - as Pearl wisely points out in her introduction- about self loathing covering someone’s real personality. Miller’s homosexuality doesn’t fully chime in with Bland’s narrative, but there are moments where the implications are very direct. It’s possibly the most awful evocation of self hatred within depression I have ever read. Every word feels true and particularly feels like Miller must have suffered every word, every sentence of this. I was horrified in a way I can truly say I haven’t been by a book in living memory. It’s a brutal masterpiece but I’m not entirely sure a book I could or can ever revisit
It’s astonishing. It’s horrible. It’s horrifying. It’s gut wrenching. It deserves to be a modern classic