Junction X
December 3, 2011
21 Comments
/ 1,073 views
Title: Junction X
Author: Erastes
Cover Artist: Alex Beecroft
Publisher: Cheyenne Publishing
Buy Link:Junction X
Genre: historical
Length: 200 pages
Rating: 5 stars out of 5
A Guest Review by Cryselle
Review Summary: Erastes has combined several disturbing elements and made me love it.
Blurb: Set in the very English suburbia of 1962 where everyone has tidy front gardens and lace curtains, Junction X is the story of Edward Johnson, who ostensibly has the perfect life: A beautiful house, a great job, an attractive wife and two well-mannered children. The trouble is he’s been lying to himself all of his life. And first love, when it does come, hits him and hits him hard. Who is the object of his passion? The teenaged son of the new neighbours.
Edward’s world is about to go to hell.
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Review
Readers who require happy endings, you are excused now. The rest of you, come over here, let me tell you about something really extraordinary.
Conformity, thy name is Edward Johnson, stockbroker, family man. Aside from a friendship with benefits with his neighbor, he’s the picture of standardized suburban success. And why shouldn’t he indulge? It’s not like either Phil or Ed’s wife will give them blowjobs, and it’s really the best way to cap off a round of golf. His life is stable with this unconventional arrangement until Phil and his wife move away.
The new neighbors don’t fit the neighborhood: he’s an engineer (how shocking! He works with his hands!) and she’s a nurse (extra shocking! She works!). They’ve come to a neighborhood nearly beyond their means in order to get their beloved, brilliant son into the best school, hoping to prepare him for the best universities.
Alex is a youth born too soon for the love he’s about to encounter. This is 1962, he’s still under-aged, and he’s gay in an exuberant way that it hurts him to hide. He’s on the cusp of adulthood, knows what he wants, and what he wants is Ed. It’s fitting that they begin to bond over his huge set-up of model trains: too serious to be toys, too playful to be work, but an acceptable reason for a thirty-three year old man to spend time with a seventeen year old boy.
This is told as Ed’s memoir, which gives a definite air of doom from the very beginning. From his intermittently frosty relationship with his former tennis-pro wife, his indulgent irritation with his young twin children, to his strangely lopsided relationship with Phil, Ed is bored and primed for a grand passion, but given the times, his lover, and his self-delusion, there isn’t a bit of hope that this will end in any way but tears.
And I cried, oh I cried. I gritted my teeth, I wanted to shake Ed and smack Phil: I wanted to lead Alex by the hand away from this life, this man, into another decade where he could be happy all his life. This might be a throwback to an older form, where gay lovers had to be punished, but the prose is so beautiful, the tragedy so poignant and inevitable, and unfolds so perfectly that the step back works. Ed is not an entirely reliable narrator: his capacity for deluding himself is high, though he comes to recognize that he is depraved, but it’s a corruption of integrity, not sexuality. Everyone around him, from his family to his friends, suffers from his flexible honesty; Alex suffers most of all.
Ed lays himself bare, given the restrictions of his ability to speak honestly; Alex is seen through his eyes with either a beatific glow or an unwarranted dismissal. The secondary characters suffer from Ed’s narration but have a vivid presence: Valerie chafes at her life, worrying at Ed, Phil, who can do friendly blowjobs and winks at an affair as long as he thinks it’s a woman, and the Charleses, Alex’ parents, horrified at the last by their golden child.
This story has a lot of elements that I’d say, as a knee jerk reaction, that I hate. Lying, cheating, an underaged MC. And yet I loved the story. I do sad endings if they’re fitting. This is fitting.
This is one gorgeously written story; it’s painful but intense. I’m glad I read it, though I don’t know that I’ll revisit it; it hurts too much. But one time through hurts so good. 5 stars
Author Information
Wave
Madonna196
Bogusia
Larissa
Sirius
I excused myself right I after I have heard about the ending elsewhere. I easily do “they don’t stay together” endings, if they are fitting of course, but I only do endings that tragic in the extraordinary cases. But I am telling you excusing myself was hard, because I love historicals and I usually enjoy Erastes’ writing. Your wonderful review tempted me again, but I think I can resist the temptation.
thank you.
The last line is so amazing and tragic and casts a whole different light on the rest of the story that I think it qualifies as extraordinary. But I understand that a good long cry at the end may not be what you want from your reading. I don’t react that vocally to most work.
I read this book a couple of weeks ago and I ended up in tears. I really loved it, even though it was heartbreaking and painful to read. I agree there was a air of doom since the beginning and still, even though I know nothing good could come out of it all in the end, I still hoped and wished. The end was perfect, in its sadness. Even though Ed made lots of mistakes, cheated and lied, I still felt that the love he and Alex had was somehow pure.
Oh yeah, I agree. The love between them was true, and only when the rest of the world got involved did perceptions change and Ed become his baser self. I wished right along with you that I wanted it to work out better. Knowing that it wouldn’t and couldn’t were good for, I think, 4 tissues right there.
I excused myself after reading several other reviews who described the story heartbreaking and the ending as a shocker. I do love how Erastes writes and, like Sirius, I was tempted, but I think I will wait for her next book. Thank you though for the lovely review.
Heartbreaking, oh yeah, in a way few can write. I haven’t read Erastes’ entire body of work, so I have some things to look forward to. This is a superior and tragic read. Snfff.
Thank you for a wonderful review Cryselle. I love Erastes’s writing. I have reviewed a few of her books and I’m sorely tempted to read Junction X. Aren’t most historicals tragic?
One of my favourites is The Front Runner by Patricia Nell Warren set in 1974 which had a tragic ending but I still absolutely loved the book.
A lot of historicals have some element of tragedy, but I don’t think it has to be universal. I just read one where the author got a happy ending out of a maritime disaster, and it was historically accurate. I think it depends on the time period and the people. Thinking Persian Boy here.
I have just finished this book and loved it from start to finish. One of the things I loved is that it is gritty and real and tragic – as real life often is.
I like some escapism as much as the next person but I do find I get a little weary of the inevitable HEA (or at least HFN) endings that prevail so often in the m/m genre.
This was beautifully written and very, very credible. As you say in your review, the biggest tragedy is that Alex is born 20 years too soon.
I dont know Nithu, I hope you dont mind me getting a little argumentative, as I often do when I hear “gritty, real and tragic- as real life often is”. Of course I respect you being tired of happy endings, but I do not agree that real life is often tragic. To me real life can be tragic, happy, something in between and great story with happy ending to me may or may not be real or believable, because of course romance is well, romance and cannot be hundred percent realistic. I mean, few days ago I finished a book (forgive me Wave lol it has nothing to do with MM) called Ice Road by Gillian Slovo. I am still a bit under impression from this book and tell everybody under the moon about this book. The book is about Stalinism repressions in the Soviet Union (specifically in Leningrad/St. Petersburg) and then it goes in the Second World War and siege of Leningrad. The book was amazing, beyond amazing as far as I am concerned, and it is about one of the most tragic, horrible periods in the life of my home country. I am sure many people know that millions died during Stalin’s rule, just because he felt like it. I dont know how many people know about siege of Leningrad, but those who dont, it was horrible tragedy, so many people died from hunger. Having said it and I am very well read in that period of history, not *everybody* died. The narrator of this book is driven by many motivations, but one of the most important ones is the desire to survive, survive no matter what and try to remain a human being while you are doing it. And having read so many documentary reads about that period, I find this desire to survive to be incredibly true to life and historically acurate. People die in this book, wonderful one of the most likeable characters dies and this is true to life as well, but at the end of the book I did not feel devastated, because I felt that strength of the narrator and knew that she just may live. So what is my point in all of that? I guess just because the artist chose to give her tale a tragic ending, it does not mean that I would automatically consider it more realistic than the historical with happy ending. I of course have not read the book and if I will eventually cave in, I will let you guys know.
It is also quite possible that instead of crying (but the opposite is possible too, so I cannot really speculate about that) I will get angry at that character in the ending, of course cannot say more about spoilers. Lets just say that I grew up with War and Peace and Anna Carenina and while I try to reread War and Peace every year, I would not touch Anna Carenina anymore, because every time I open the book I get so mad at Anna even before the ending would come. The twit should have lived for her child as far as I am concerned, even if she had no other reasons to live. And I am perfectly fine with War and Peace, even if I cry every time I read about Andrey’s death, who is my favorite character there. But I respect older Natasha so much more than I would ever respect Anna, enough said.
Anyway, sorry for rambling, I just love talking about the books lol. I think another important reason (besides just not always wanting to have a good cry at the end of the book) why I would not want to read such tragic ending in a love story and why I am much better with it in other genres and literary fictions, is because there if tragedy strikes, there is often, if not always, another storyline, or another character, no matter how secondary who can show that other endings are possible and exist as well. In a love story though, I am often too invested in the main characters and it feels like it is just tragedy and nothing else. I know it was never marketed as romance, thank goodness, so I have no problem with marketing or anything like that.
If I will cave in eventually, will let you guys know what I thought
Goodness me, I hadn’t realised I was being so clichéd. Quite possibly our experiences of life have been very different.
Nithu, I am very sorry I was not calling you cliched. I just said that I have heard the argument before, I have heard many different kinds of arguments before as I am sure people have heard my arguments before. I love talking about the books, can you see how long my posts often get? I love arguing, I do apologize, I was not trying to diminish what you said.
Wave said it was ok to comment – I don’t normally, because it comes over as needy author or stalker author, but I did want to say thank you for this review, and I’m gratified that (although I apologise for) you went through the emotions you did, because it was part of what I was aiming for. I appreciate that “dead gay syndrome” is something we all are happy we are away from these days–where once in books and films you could only show a gay character if they died (in the main, a generalisation) but I wanted to hold a mirror up to today against THEN and show the changes, and maybe not the changes too. Although I made up nearly everything, time, names, place, details of courtship etc, the ending of the book was based on people that I once knew and it is important, I think, to remember that tragedies happen like this–and are still happening today.
Anyway, didn’t mean to ramble, just wanted to say thank you–it wasn’t an easy book to write, so I can imagine it wasn’t easy to read either.
You are more than welcome, and please don’t apologize for hitting so many emotional chords, that’s apologizing for success. I was *very* involved with these characters.
“Readers who require happy endings, you are excused now.”
That would be me on most days. When and if Im snowbound this winter, I may pick it up.
Thank you!
This is intense, I can see needing to be in the right mood for it.
A shame if people shy away from this story because of a lack of HEA. Unfortunately I couldn’t see any ending for this story other than the one Erastes brilliantly written for it. In those times, in that environment, a love between a repressed married man with a conscience and a bright eyed young man, it was always going to end in tears.
I take solace, though, that despite the tragic ending, it’s still a truly touching romance. That Ed and Alex didn’t drift apart – like Ed fooled himself into thinking that they would – they were crossed star lovers in their own right.
Another interesting point in the story – perhaps gives us hope/hint – is that when Claire left Phil for a younger man, it was sort of accepted by all parties. Just 20 years before that period, that could have been a great scandal for everyone involved. Just as, if Ed and Alex met today, they could have a real chance of making it. Ed is a product of his times, he’s powerless to resist Alex, just as he’s powerless to resist the outside forces in those times.
For a story as well crafted as this, I’d take the pain of a tragic ending.
Boy do I love to ramble sometimes. Warning, another long comment to follow. Another warning, I just want to express how I feel, I do not mean to question or doubt, or diminish how everybody else feels
Honestly I just do not see how it is a shame if some readers will shy away from the story solely due to lack of HEA. Readers may shy away from the story for so many reasons – some readers do not care for characters cheating on one another, some readers do not want to see one character raping each other. Some readers do not want to read the book set in the specific time period, or the book with a lot of violence in it. Some readers may simply decide that character behaves like an ass and they do not want to finish the story because of that, whatever that behavior is. I do not see how tragic ending is a distinct thing in the wide variety of reasons readers may shy away from the story. Sorry, it just something that I always keep wondering about, as somebody who does read stories with pretty tragic endings (although more often than not with some touch of hope) in other genres as I mentioned above, but rarely in this genre. Somehow it makes me feel that there is something wrong with my tastes if not wanting to read the story, which ends like this one should be a shame, you know? The story may be technically brilliantly written and reader may still not want take it on for so many reasons and to me tragic ending just one of many of those reasons. Now whether ending fits the story or not, thats for me a different issue. I have read stories with the HEA endings slapped on and issues between MC not resolved or resolved superficially, I really wanted them to walk away from each other at the end in those stories and I would have cheered on, you know? My definition of happy ending (which is quite different from the general one) does not include the characters staying together. I am certainly happy when it happens, but as long as they are both alive, I am perfectly okay with them ending up apart, if the storyline so demands and justifies. So to me, it is possible to write happy ending that does not fit the story or happy ending that does fit the story, and same with the tragic ending. But even if tragic ending fits the story perfectly, IMO it is still a very legit reason just as any other reason to walk away from such story.
It might be a legit reason to walk away/shy away from something, in fact, you don’t need a reason to not read something, but it could still seem like a shame to others. Could we just leave it at that?
Read this and absolutely adored it. I remember the 1960s and there’s so much in the story that reminded me of times past – including the rigidity in what was expected of one and how impossible it was to break out . Ed and Alex are characters that have stayed with me over the past few weeks. They keep coming back to me as I think ‘what if he’d …?” or “If only they’d …”. It has made me think – never a bad thing. A stunning read.
Wowwww. You really make me want to read this story, despite all the warnings about an unhappy ending. I think I’m going to have to save this one for when I’m in the mood for an angsty read though. XP
Is…is there anyway someone could let me know what happens in the very end? Like, does Alex go off to university and Ed stays married? Or does Ed get a divorce?