*November, 2007 – Changed from Books We Love
Post comments about books you would recommend to anyone. Fiction, non-fiction, poetry, books on writing, publishing–you name it. (Check the main pages of the blog for posts about our favorite books. Click on the category tags or look through archives for past entries).
I would like to recommend “The Phantom of the Opera” by Gaston Leroux.
If you have only encountered the Phantom of the Opera through the Andrew Loyd Webber musical (on stage or the recent movie adaptation) then put this version out of your mind and read the book. It is short, but breathtaking.
There are passages in there that are pure heartache, as Leroux recounts two love stories, each bittersweet in their own way: the ultimately successful love between Christine and Raoul, and the doomed love that Erik, the Opera Ghost, has for Christine.
My sympathies kept switching between Raoul and Erik, but ultimately I think I identified most with Erik. Someone capable of so much, who loves Christine so much that he literally dies of his love, and yet who is capable of such destructiveness in his life, managing to turn the affections of Christine to hatred for him. We have all been in situations when our own wrong-headedness leads us down the wrong path, causes us to say things we regret, and hurt people that we care about. Erik is a monster, but he is also the most human character in the novel. Flawed, yet perfect. Demonic, yet angelic. Erik is a cypher for the dreams and aspirations that we all have, ambitions thwarted by circumstance, fate, bad luck, self-destructive behaviour, whatever we wish to blame.
It is a book I know I shall revisit in the future, and one that I would not hesitate to recommend to everyone.
I admit to checking this blog for my own purposes. I got the link from someone at the West Hollywood book fair as a site that promotes gay friendly literature. So I thought you’d like to know that NYT bestselling (usually hetero) romance author Suzanne Brockmann has a book, All Through the Night, coming out tuesday featuring the wedding of a longtime fan favorite Jules to his main man Robin. And all the author’s earnings for the book go to Mass Equality to help keep marriage rights equal in Mass.
http://www.suzannebrockmann.com/attncountdown.htm
It’s a good cause, and I’m expecting it to be a very fun read as well.