Love isn't forever. It's not easy being a survivor. There are
secrets in every relationship. Found families are
delicate constructs. These are a few of the potent themes woven with
unsettling grace, humor, and heartbreak
through Brian Bouldrey's elegiac story of one man's odyssey into his
late lover's past.
Tristan Bolder, the San
Francisco narrator of Love, the Magician, is on a much-delayed
pilgrimage to Tucson and the desert surrounding it, five
years after burying his companion Joe. At first, Joe's sister, a
Catholic-turned-Pentecostal fundamentalist; his mother, a lackadaisical
guesthouse keeper; and his boyhood best friend, a straight Punjabi
Muslim, all welcome
Tristan and his memories of Joe back into their lives.
But this isn't a we're-so-sad-he-died-so-young cliche of a novel.
Bouldrey is too deft and honest a craftsman to
tell such a simple, naive story. Instead, he confronts readers with the
reality that not every dead lover is a saint, and not every survivor is
one either. Lives which on the surface seem models of adoration,
self-sacrifice, and
eternal devotion are often built on hidden fissures, and the self
interest of sisters, mothers, and friends
often intersects with and shatters the bonds of shared memory.
As Love, the Magician opens, Tristan is set to
revisit his time of love with Joe. As it closes, he's ready to
relinquish it, to move on with his life, and not
unhappily so. That's a harsh truth about life and death with AIDS, but
one that Bouldrey handles with delicacy and
definite skill.
-- Richard Labonté
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