I was looking forward to reading this novel, "Perfect Peace" by Daniel Black. The storyline is intriguing - a mother who already has six boys gives birth to a seventh son but desperately wants a daughter so she raises the boy as a girl and names him Perfect. The mother, Emma Jean, adores Perfect and dotes on him to the exclusion of her other sons: James Earl, Authorly, King Solomon, Woody, Bartimaeus and Mister. To carry out her deceitful plan of transforming Perfect from a boy to a girl, she dresses him in dresses and ribbons, gives him a doll for Christmas, forbids him from playing with his brothers, and teaches him how to be a girl complete with learning to urinate sitting down as opposed to standing up like his brothers. Meanwhile, the father, Gus and the six brothers have no clue that Perfect is a boy because he is isolated from the others and told never to let his brothers see him naked.
However, when Perfect turns 8 years old, Emma Jean's plan comes to a violent end as she decides that she can no longer keep Perfect's gender a secret and is afraid his friend, Eva Mae (who Perfect has been playing "house" with), may discover her secret. Thus, Emma Jean rather crudely marches Perfect down to the river Jordan, tells him he is a boy, shows him her genitalia to prove that he is not a girl, cuts his hair and forces him to change out of his dress and put on overalls like his brothers. The two proceed back to the house where Emma Jean announces to the family that Perfect is not a girl, but a boy. The declaration sends Gus, a gentle man who cries whenever it rains, into a violent rage where he nearly kills Emma Jean. The story proceeds as Perfect, who Gus has now renamed Paul, must accept and adopt his new life as a boy.
Intriguing plot. However, the book was a disappointment. The author was unable to take a challenging subject and explore the numerous complex issues in a thought provoking manner. The premise of the book is whether a person's sexuality - heterosexual or homosexual - is determined by birth, choice or socialization. This controversial issue was glossed over in a superficial manner that relied on stereotypes and cliches. There is no examination of the question of whether a boy who is socialized as a girl for the first 8 years of his life will be homosexual. Nor is there exploration of the perspective that sexuality is something a person is born with, therefore, a hetersexual boy will be sexually attracted to girls even if he wore dresses and played with dolls. The author did not develop the character, Perfect/Paul, in a way which the reader could gain insight into these questions. Instead, the character development was confusing. Perfect was playing house with Eva Mae and appeared to be attracted to girls. He was also attracted to Christine. Thus, the reader would think he was heterosexual. But then the author keeps saying Paul gets a "tingly" feeling when he sees Johnny Ray who by both male and female opinions is attractive. The ending is oversimplified - Paul grows up to be a fashion designer in New York. There is no indication in the entire book that Paul is creative and desires to be a designer.
Another major problem with the book is the writing. It was not clear, but confusing. The dialect at times did not fit the time period of the 1940s and 1950s. It was not clear which character's point of view the story was being told from: Emma Jean, Paul, Gus, or one of the brothers. Also the author contantly "told" the story to the reader instead of "showing" the story through the characters, the relationships of the characters to each other, events and dialogue.
Other problems included the author trying to tackle too many stories within one book. He would often diverge into a story about one of the other characters such as Authorly, Sol, Bartimaeus or Mister, and quickly summarize what happened with their lives. The background story of Emma Jean and her abusive relationship with her mother was distracting as it was not developed enough to serve as a justification as to why she chose to raise her son as a girl. Emma Jean's and Henrietta's relationship at the end of the book was unbelievable - that Emma Jean would enter involuntary servitude and become insane just to provide Paul a suit for a dance. The secret of Paul's gender was already exposed so the entire "agreement" between Emma Jean and Henrietta was not plausible. Woody and Mister were caricatures representing the conservative religious perspective on homosexuality (Woody) and the rejection of the notion that all homosexual men are effeminate (Mister).
The potential of the book is never realized and it leaves the reader unfulfilled. Unfortunately "Perfect Peace" is imperfect.
No comments:
Post a Comment