Mysterious Skin by Scott Heim
I picked up Mysterious Skin, book 37 in my 50 book challenge for the year, after a recommendation by Michael Schaub at Blog of a Bookslut. Schaub noted that a movie had just been made and was receiving good reviews. This was the third book in a row I’d read with narration revolving among characters. Heim’s writing wasn’t always strong enough to carry this off. I sometimes had to flip to the beginning of a chapter to remind myself who was speaking because the voices weren’t distinct. The two main characters are Brian and Neil. We are introduced to them when they are 8, then return to them 11 years later. Brian is a loner struggling to recall what happened that left him with no memory after a little league game, while Neil is a homosexual hustler who keeps upping the level of risk in his life. The stories intertwine skillfully. Neil is an especially compelling character, sympathetic in spite of his recklessness. Overall, the book is concerned with memory–what we recall and what we don’t, and how we bring memories and blanks with us as we age. The writing, especially toward the end, flagged considerably, but the story and characters were enough to propel me to the end, which, while it answered the questions posed by the book, was a little contrived-ly weird for me.
Apologies for the movie-cover link. Amazon was not being cooperative when I tried to link to the cereal cover, which was the copy I read from the library.