Rick is a former porn star who lives in Los Angeles. It is not an unlikely
place for a former porn star to live, but Rick's apartment sits across the
street from an Orthodox Jewish Yeshiva. In The Boys Across the
Street (Faber and Faber, 278 pp., $24.00), the smart and funny first
novel by the late Rick Sandford, the author's namesake develops a crush
on more than a few of the school's young students. Eventually, Rick
becomes infatuated with their faith itself.
Like most crushes, Rick's begins innocently enough, with a few
words exchanged with his wary neighbors. Rick has not talked to anyone
in his family for five years because "they believe in God," and the
encounters between him and the boys are full of a curious mixture of
both fascination and dread.
Throughout, Rick is always surprised at how willing the boys are to
discuss religion and sex with him. They are not quite as fascinated with
his lifestyle as he is with theirs, but questions do arise: How do you
have sex with other men? Why would you rather be passive than active?
Why do you like the taste of semen? And inevitably, do you believe in
God?
Drawn to the passion and devotion of the boys, Rick starts writing
stories about them. He takes to wearing a yarmulke, and eventually dons
complete Chassidic drag. He reads the Tanakh and then the Mishnah and
tries to tackle the Torah. As Rick's investigation into the faith
escalates, so does the tension between him and the boys. It crescendoes
into a mysterious shooting that shatters his window.
The novel doubles back on itself when Rick lets the young men who
inspire his stories read his written accounts of their encounters. This
self-reflexive structure is a perfect framework for Rick's journey to
understanding the boys and, in turn, himself. Sandford's writing is an
expression of a keen intellect, and the arguments in the novel are
learned ones. But their scholarly background does not for a moment
inhibit the author's flair for storytelling.
There is a precise and also naive quality to the conversations between
Rick and the younger students, but that doesn't detract from the depth
of what they are discussing: identity, AIDS, community and isolation,
the importance of belief, and the absence of devotion in modern life.
This is a smartly
rendered novel about a man moving to a place where he can abandon
everything he thinks he knows. In The Boys Across the Street,
it's a place called love.
Review by Lawrence Chua
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