Thursday, March 21, 2024

Review: Eddie & Alan by Anthony O. Amiewalan


 

Genre: Literary Fiction/LGBTQ

Description:

Eddie and Alan is a novel that follows two men who reflect on the end of their three-year relationship. They come from different walks of life; Eddie is a black queer man, and Alan is a cis white, mostly straight man. They were introduced to each other at work and quickly connected. Eddie and Alan's friendship morphed into something more intimate, coming to a head during their four-day beach vacation. At its heart, this story seeks to shed light on the complexities of relationships between men, the fluidity of sexuality, and what happens when the lines are blurred.”

Author:

Born in the southern US, Anthony Amiewalan describes himself as a first-generation Nigerian American. He mostly grew up in the Midwest, then lived on the west coast for a short time before landing in Brooklyn, NY where he lives with his longtime partner. This is his first novel although he also wrote a memoir that was released in November, 2022. For more, visit his website.

Appraisal:

Years ago I read a memoir written by a then new author that told the story of a high school romance the author had. He and the girl he was involved with were doing great until her parents put an end to it, forbidding them to see each other. Years later, as adults, they ran into each other and things took off again with them eventually getting married. The author’s next book was the same story, told from the perspective of his girlfriend and eventual wife. It turns out that while the big picture was often the same, the way they viewed and interpreted events was often much different. The contrast between the two viewpoints for an outsider was interesting because as an outside observer, a reader who read about events from both sides could understand how both parties came to see things the way they did and it was a reasonable viewpoint, at least based on the information each had.

That’s a lot of words to tell you about a different book, but in the preface of this book the author explains that this novel is going to tell the story of two friends in a first-person narrative style from the viewpoint of both of the main characters, which I’m sure you could guess are named Eddie and Alan. Seeing this explanation upfront I immediately flashed on that set of books above and saw how this approach could work. And it did. That Eddie and Alan are very different from each other in many ways, from the obvious characteristics of race and sexuality, to the different approaches to life, the way they deal with difficult situations, and many other ways only adds to the story with the contrasts helping the reader to understand how people who might be different than the reader might view things. I’ve long thought that one of the things gained by reading is that it puts the reader into the minds and lives of people who are often much different than themself and helps them understand others better as a side-effect. With these two main characters you’re guaranteed at least one of them is going to be much different than you, quite possibly both of them will be, at least in some ways. The result was an interesting and enlightening read.

Buy now from:            Amazon US        Amazon UK

FYI:

A small amount of adult language. There are also some adult situations depicted although they are relatively mild as such things go.

Format/Typo Issues:

Review is based on an advance reviewer copy, so I can’t gauge the final product in this area.

Rating: **** Four Stars

Reviewed by: BigAl

Approximate word count: 35-40,000 words

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