Edinburgh by Alexander Chee

I can't say this or that that was the reason. There is no reason and every reason. Why do you want to die, I ask myself. How else does it stop? If I die, the trouble stops with me. I can see her, Tammamo, her hand closing her husband's eyes, breathing in the air to make the fire-breath, his family, watching her. Enough, she'd be thinking. Fire on her lips. It ends with me now.
...
Coe walks in to my room. Wake up, he says. Time for practice. The clock reads 6 A.M. We've joined the crew team. I pull back my covers and dress quickly in clothes Coe helped me pick: we decided I could wear gray for exercise. We run the distance between Clark and the boathouse down by the river, more or less straight down the long hill of the campus. In the dark morning the sun is the gold centre of everything. Death feels far away in that instant, impossible. We arrive at the cold river as summer touches the beginning of its last days, and Coe smiles. The sun. Coe."
(p. 98)

My wonderful friend Vita recommended this book to me and it has to be one of the best reads of this year for me. Alexander Chee was little known to me as an author and a quick search reveals Edinburgh as his first and possibly only book. I hope he keeps writing. Edinburgh is written from the perspective of a Korean-American kid we know only as Fee. He joins a boy's choir where he and several other boys are molested by the choir director 'Big Eric' who picks on only boys who look a certain way. This includes Fee's secret love and close friend, Peter.

His life unfolds from this central event and the way in which Fee remembers and describes his abuse can be seen in the quote above. Fee is gay, but not because of the abuse, in fact it almost seems it is in spite of what has happened. Fee's life is affected hugely - he engages in a series of relationships at university as he sees his friends crumble around him (one even kills himself). Despite this, Fee manages to build a life for himself until he is confronted by a boy at the school he teaches, who reminds him far too much of a boy he loved in the choir.

This book is written amazingly and is both heart-wrenching and at times amusing. Chee has demonstrated an amazing and empathetic stance towards characters. At the same time, he hasn't denied them agency or taken away from their experience in any way. His literary phrase unfolds magically and he has the ability within this to provoke emotion in (I would say) most readers.

I really hope I read more from this author. This is the best fiction book I have read in a long time.