“What we have here is a failure to communicate” the famous line uttered by Strother Martin (“Captain”) in Cool Hand Luke cannot be more appropriately applied than to the characters in Paul Russell’s The Coming Storm. If “diamonds are a girl’s best friend” then in this book “obfuscation is a gay character’s best friend.” This may seem cynical but it is both happily and sadly the reality of this really good story...happy because without the multiple evasions and self denials this intriguing plot would not exist…sad because the ultimate outcome, if not truly tragic, is nearly so.
The setting is an exclusive private boys school located along the Hudson north of New York City. Here, moneyed families send their spoiled and/or troubled offspring to be educated and, presumably, fixed. More than one seems to have arrived “broken.”
Among the several protagonists is an emotionally troubled, sexually repressed, headmaster who sees himself as a failure (even though he’d acted assertively, even heroically, in a time past), a young gay newly-hired English teacher fleeing his active gay life in New York City, as well as a troubled fifteen year old student, son of an emotionally brutal mega-tycoon.
The primary plot centers around the relationship between Tracy Parker, the young English teacher, and one of his students, Noah Lathrop III. What starts as a professional educational interaction grows through sexual obsession (on both characters’ part) to a full-fledged sexual affair. The reader has little doubt that this relationship will come out badly.
What makes this book worth reading is not so much the unraveling of the main plot…the student/teacher affair, as the development of the secondary plots: the ruminations of headmaster’s wife, the deterioration of a senior faculty member’s marriage, the gradual acceptance of his mortality by an HIV-positive former student.
The driving force of both the primary and secondary plots however is a marvel in itself. Secretiveness! Emotional evasion! With two or three exceptions no one truly evaluates who he really is, and to the extent he does there is a massive failure to communicate, to interact honestly. There seems to be so much evasion and obfuscation that this reviewer believed he’d fallen into a daytime soap, albeit a well-written one.
Some of the characters’ behavior and motivation seems to ring especially true. The description of the student/teacher sexual obsession is all too real. Some of us—the lucky ones—have obsessed over a love object, appropriate or not. Tracy’s periodic drooling over early adolescent males while inappropriate (and illegal) is very understandable. Noah’s longing for the sexual attention of his teacher is misplaced but believable. Louis Tremper, headmaster and stodgy academic, displaces his longing for male/male intimacy into a treatise on Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice. The passages relating to this sub-theme are particularly well-thought out and ring true.
I thought, though, that the tragic nature of the plot sort of fizzled out at the last moment. Tracy’s end seems insufficiently harsh to qualify as a tragedy. Noah’s end I thought is especially contrived. While Noah is a sympathetic believable character, his actions in the last chapter (s) are more literary solution than consistent behavior.
This is definitely a book most readers will enjoy. The writing in some passages truly soars, infused with beauty, creative nuance, and insight. Alas, some sections seem almost mediocre.
Interestingly, I found the most consistent and the most honest character to be Noah’s father, Noah Lathrop Sr. He is portrayed as unsympathetic, arrogant, uncaring, and ruthless. Yet he had taken the time to examine himself and in less than two paragraphs can articulate to his son who he is, how he views the world, and what his goals are. He is an unpleasant jerk whom I cannot help but admire.
I think you’d like this book if you choose to read it. I usually don’t think about ranking the books I review, but if I ever do I’m sure I’ll place The Coming Storm near the top of hierarchy.