Q Magazine Edmonton Reviews "Songs for the New Depression"
I'm not sure what it is, but I've gotten amazing reviews from Canadian critics, as well as heartfelt letters from Canadian readers. Not sure why the novel resonates so with them, but am grateful for the reception it has received! Check out the lovely review from Q Magazine Edmonton!
Songs for the New Depression
Gabe Travers is dying. He knows it. He is surrounded by the people he loves, his mother and her new wife Pastor Sally, his best friend Clare, his lover Jon. These are the people who have clung to him through the years, who have stood by him through bad decisions and bitchy remarks. Dying, he takes Jon to Paris; what better gift to give the man you love than the world?It was a gift he'd been given 9 years earlier, by a man he loved, and as the book goes back in time, we the readers are taken on that journey with him. And then that journey continues back 10 years, to first kisses, to coming out, to a time when Gabe begins to make those relationships that will set the course of his life. To when he first hears Bette Midler.When you look back at your life, how do you want to see yourself? Why did you make the decisions you made? How did you get here, to this point? Those are just some of the questions Gabe faces, and while he faces them, we explore his life, stripped away of pretension, bare, honest, pure.One of the things that resonated most with me is how we push people away when we should be pulling them close. Is it a gay man's curse, to resort to witty but cruel barbs for humor, being quick to showcase other's faults to detract attention away from our own? Too often, to prevent being hurt, we strike first. Then it's always the other one's fault, never our own. But when it's done, what are we left with but guilt and regret and the feeling we should have been... what? Nicer, maybe? More appreciative, definitely.From LA to Palm Springs to Paris, over the course of 20 years, Kergan Edwards-Stout takes us on a beautiful journey. The characters are dynamic, interesting, and real, and the relationships are painful and funny and romantic and sexy and sad all at once. No matter how much changes in life, those relationships are a constant. As are dreams. It is never too late to make a dream come true. And after all, “if you have nothing left to dream, are you really still alive?”