Martin and John

Michiko Kakutani

Astonishing...If this fiercely written novel offers an indelible portrait of gay life during the plague years, it also opens out to become a universal story about love and loss and the redemptive powers of fiction...A stunning debut.-- The New York Times

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

With this poetic, tightly compressed novel, Peck makes a head-turning debut on the literary scene. It is composed of a feverish sequence of vignettes, which the reader gradually learns are the reminiscences of John, a gay man, as he tries to come to terms with the death of his lover, Martin, from AIDS. Some episodes straightforwardly recount John's life: abused by his hostile father, he escapes to New York and survives by becoming a hustler; he falls in love with Martin, and moves with him to Kansas, where Martin dies. Alternating with this account are ``stories'' written by John, in each of which different, spiritual versions of the narrator (named John) and of a chameleonic character named Martin work their way through states of need, surrender and bereavement. Subtle but highly charged, the fragments carry the reader continually deeper into human mystery, and what we at first hear as a fugue on the destructive powers of sexual desire evolves rapidly into a lay psalm that proclaims both the necessity of love and its inevitable loss. Peck's operatic intensity and lyric grief come tumbling out in these pages; this is very much a young man's novel, but its flaws are also emblems of its power. Though the symbolism is often obvious, and the writing so pitched that it would seem excessive in less talented hands, the narrative plunges forward on a wildly romantic course. (Jan.)

Library Journal

John, our 19-year-old narrator, escapes from an abusive family to New York and meets Martin. They fall in love. Martin develops AIDS, they move to Kansas, and Martin dies. Throughout the narrative are stories written by John after Martin's death about a couple that is always named Martin and John, though they are different characters. This kind of structural complexity would be enough to sink most novels, but Peck writes so splendidly that it is a pleasure just to keep on reading. By themselves, some of these stories are among the most powerful representations of gay life written. Together, these tales of sexual and emotional abuse, antigay violence, and AIDS read too much like a litany of the sorrows of gay men; at times, the elegiac tone is overblown. Yet this remains an exciting first novel by a 24-year-old author. Recommended for public libraries, particularly with strong gay and lesbian collections.-- Brian Kenney, Brooklyn P.L.