PULSES WITH VIVID,
AUTHENTIC SCENES
Review by Diane de la Paz, The Weekly Volcano, Nov. 1, 2007
Some
irresistible people showed up and took over Alec Clayton's mind.
Marty Winters; his wild wife, Maria Perez; his second wife, Selena; their kids;
and some good friends: They come to life in Clayton's third novel.
And beware: They'll burrow into your mind, too.
"The Wives of Marty Winters" opens with a stunning description of the Seattle
Pride Day rally, where we meet Marty and Selena and move with them through a
harrowing scene.
Then it turns far back in time to when Marty found Maria at an Olympia High
School dance.
"The heart senses moments of magic," Clayton writes, putting us amid the
teen-agers as they're swaying beneath a mirror ball.
Maria and Marty "slip off the dance floor ... help themselves to punch and sit
at one of the small tables and watch the aurora borealis cast on walls and
ceilings by that magical glass ball."
So begins a saga about how the past haunts a man and how homophobia affects his
family.
"Wives" is Clayton's heartfelt tale, a book he had to write. In it Marty and
Selena's gay son is attacked and brutally beaten, but he survives, unlike
Clayton's own bisexual son, Bill, who was assaulted in 1995 and committed
suicide a month hence. Bill was 17.
What does Clayton hope to give the readers of his self-published book?
"Compassion," he answers without a pause.
This isn't Clayton's memoir, though. It's a novel he's worked on for two years,
writing, rewriting, taking breaks, coming back.
"I reach a point where the characters are telling me what they're going to do,"
Clayton says. "I think about them while I'm driving, taking a bath, washing
dishes ... ."
A shocking crime is committed within the first few pages of "Wives," and we
don't learn the outcome until the latter half of the book. But this is no
mystery novel. It's an odyssey across the country over a few decades. And it
will ring familiar to readers, Clayton believes.
"They'll run into these people in their own families or through other people
they know," he says.
"Wives" is overwritten in spots, but it also pulses with vivid, authentic scenes
and delicious moments. The story rolls like a train through Marty's life — high
school in the Pacific Northwest, Va., tours of the Mediterranean and back to the
United States where he meets a girl named Marigold from a religious commune.
Clayton's other novels — 2000's "Until the Dawn" and "Imprudent Zeal" from 2004
— also unfold in various towns across America. They're informed by Clayton's own
life — as a kid from Tupelo, Miss., ’50s and then took off for New York City,
where he worked for Everything for Everybody, an organization that provided
housing, meals and clothing for the poor. He met his wife-to-be, Gabi, in New
York, and together they moved back to Mississippi to start a similar operation,
the Persons Service, and a literary and arts magazine. After much financial
struggle, they moved to Olympia in 1988. The couple, married 33 years, are now
leading activists with Parents, Family and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, or
PFLAG.
Customer
reviews from amazon.com
4 out of 5 stars
By J. R. Callner "a cook"
I live in Olympia, WA, one of the venues for this novel. I read other
books set here (like Jim Lynch's The Highest Tide) with a little
apprehension, but both Lynch and Clayton's novels deliver the flavor of
the community in pleasing and authentic fashion. Wives is easy to read,
moves along with a collection of offbeat, imperfect characters rendered
with unsentimental affection by an author who delivers time and place
(and the changes of his characters through time) credibly and
immediately. If you'd like a return trip to high school, the hippie
days, and a journey through an unusual life somewhat accidentally lived,
with quite a few laughs and some poignant loss, to boot, this is a great
bet.
3 out of 5 stars
By Anthony J. Adam
WIVES interweaves a number of 'coming out' stories into a portrait of
the development of a glbt sensibility amongst family and friends in
Washington State. Although the catalyst for the central plot is their
son's homosexuality and his personal development, the story is primarily
concerned with protagonist Marty Winters and how his life in particular
is changed, not entirely for the better, by a series of relationships
both before and during his marriage to gay rights activist Selena. A
subplot involving his friend Chloe and her own 'coming out' story
injects a bit of humor into what otherwise is a relatively tragic tale.
The writing is generally good, although the story lags at times, and
readers familiar with Clayton's earlier novels will find this one not as
tightly constructed. Part murder mystery and part family drama, WIVES
will be of interest to PFLAG families and others concerned with 'coming
out' issues, as well as anyone familiar with the Clayton's locales.
3 out of 5 stars
By L. E Johnson (Raleigh, NC United States)
Alec Clayton's third novel is not quite up to the overall impact of his
first, Until the Dawn, but it is filled with good characterization and
honest, vivid detail. A little too politically correct in places, it
nevertheless develops Marty's emotional and intellectual journey from
the 1960s to the present with admirable candor and sometimes luminous
humor. The novel confronts many of the social issues of the last 40
years, such as feminism, gay rights, and antiintellectualism with
insight and conciliation but never becomes didactic. There's uninhibited
sexuality here, as well as jealousy and emotional longing to sear the
imagination. I recommend this book, especially if you enjoyed Until the
Dawn.
4 out of 5 stars
By Van B. Cook "vbc" (Texas)
Although it contains its share of tragedy, the book is fun to read. By
the time I finished it, I felt that I knew the characters personally.
The author introduced them in a "Steinbeck" kind of way.
