Review: The Disappearers is a harrowing look at gay life in Jamaica
A Kingston production of John Herbert’s all-male prison play provides the backdrop for masterful Booker-nominated novel
Confession: it took me about a month-and-a-half to finish Marlon James’ staggering new novel The Disappearers (Rating: ✭✭✭✭✭). Sure, it’s a hefty tome — just over 600 pages — and features a cast of a couple dozen characters (thankfully, as in his Booker Prize-winning A Brief History of Seven Killings, there’s a breakdown of who’s who at the front of the book).
But there were times, especially in the first half, when I simply had to put the novel down. It was too painful to read and I needed a break. There are passages in the book’s brutal second section that are now seared into my brain.
The book begins in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1988, where a group of gay men, having responded to an advertisement, meet up to act in an amateur production of Canadian John Herbert’s queer prison drama Fortune and Men’s Eyes.
Our narrator is a bright young student named Eddy Porteous, whose rather privileged upper-middle-class life consists of buying CDs, hanging out with his best friend Dionne and wondering when, not if, his bickering parents are going to separate.
The others taking part in the production are: director Havelock Titus, an Oxford-educated man who is adapting the play for their particular milieu; Jordan Brown, an expelled student who’s close to Eddy’s age who has a lot more worldly (and sexual) experience than him; Matt Chin, a mysterious, attractive half-Chinese man who works in advertising; Omar Joseph, a wealthy businessman; Rainford Ellis, an office worker; Orrin Turner, a data systems manager; and Clive Lim, the show’s stage manager.
As the men receive their parts and begin to discuss and work through the scenes (cue lots of amusing bitchy banter), they gradually open up about how they’ve survived the rampant homophobia in Jamaican society. It’s been particularly violent since the rise of AIDS. Only Matt Chin declines giving a confessional.
And then, a month into rehearsals, a dozen men hijack them, force them to strip naked and assault them for hours with cutlasses, clubs and other blunt instruments. One man is killed, a tree forced up his anus; another has both his eyes gouged out; they’re all physically and emotionally shattered.
James gives us punchy monologues from each of the bashers, who call themselves “the Blackjacks.” (This was the section that I found the hardest to get through.)
Afterwards, we see how the media has warped the assault — it’s framed as some kind of orgy, so there’s little investigation into it. The murdered man’s family is shamed and humiliated. Two victims disappear altogether. For a while the novel becomes a noir-tinged story of trying to figure out where they’ve gone. And then it becomes a quasi-vigilante story about vengeance and payback.
It’s hard to talk about the book (and even mention characters) without spoiling the narrative twists and turns. The novel spans some 32 years. The longest section consists mostly of interviews about the assault. What’s intriguing is that while we expect Eddy to continue telling the story, it’s essentially taken over by someone else, a figure who emerges as the book’s most complex and contradictory character. And then in the fourth and fifth sections, we get even more POVs, including someone we’ve spent much of the novel wondering about.
Each of them, of course, has been warped by that brutal bashing. But how they have or have not adjusted to it is what gives the book heft and amplitude. Some of them disappear by leaving town; others have disappeared from lives while living them.
As in A Brief History, most of the book is written in a patois that (for non-West Indian readers, at least) takes some getting used to. But it’s absolutely essential in establishing a rhythmic backdrop to the story.
One of James’ brilliant ideas is to include a fictional reggae/dancehall singer named Streggeh Don, whose hit song “Batty is Not Pussy” acts as a disturbing refrain through many of the book’s harrowing moments.
Some other unforgettable characters include a once-famous Jamaican ballet dancer who’s dying of AIDS in an encampment in a gulley, and the perfectly named Paul Royale, a former Jamaican ambassador who’s as sleazy and morally bankrupt as any fictional villain you can name.
Speaking of fiction, many of James’ characters are extremely well-read. One of Jordan’s favourite authors is John Rechy, whose queer classic The Sexual Outlaw is a touchstone. Either Jordan or Eddy namecheck Gore Vidal, Jean Genet, Paul Monette. There’s a sequence in the book that feels like an homage to Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, which is also mentioned.
At the same time, the book is fiercely, proudly explicit and uncompromising in its depictions of queer sex. But it’s just as psychologically probing.
Even in 600+ pages, James doesn’t tie up all his narrative threads. There’s a lavender marriage subplot involving one gay man, a plus-sized butch lesbian and their biological child that is introduced and then dropped.
And there’s a bit of repetitiveness in the lengthy middle section. Some song references go beyond helping to set the time and place and lapse into self-indulgence.
But James isn’t after subtle effects. He’s working on a huge canvas, giving space and voice to a range of queer characters from all socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. The gay characters aren’t second fiddles or sidekicks; they’re the leads.
He doesn’t handle his characters with kid gloves. There’s a relationship in the book that is filled with such complex feelings of self-loathing and guilt that is unlike anything I’ve read before; fittingly, its aftermath is Shakespearean.
And speaking of Shakespeare, I was wondering how the author would come back to Herbert’s play, whose title, of course, is drawn from the Bard’s Sonnet 29. There are echoes of it throughout, but not in any schematic way, and then it’s addressed head-on in the final pages.
This is one of the least sentimental novels I’ve read — no wonder one of James’ characters prefers Trollope to Dickens. But the absorbing and moving ending feels absolutely earned. It’s a masterpiece.
The Disappearers ($40 cloth) is published by Penguin Random House Canada. James talks with author Kamal Al-Solaylee tonight (Thursday, October 28) at the Toronto Reference Library’s Appel Salon (789 Yonge). Free (registration required). tpl.bibliocommons.com