Big, Gay and Christian
by Walter Biggins
James Hannaham's novel "God Says No" (McSweeney's, 2009, $22) chronicles the coming-of-age of Gary Gray, a man who loves Jesus and Disney World in almost equal measures. But he loves his college roommate, Russ, almost as much as he loves Christ, and not at all in the same way. For an overweight black man dreaming of the Christian life in Orlando, that dormant homosexuality is a lit firecracker ready to go off in his hands.
The novel works both as a wicked satire of conservative Christianity and as a sensitive portrait of a struggling Christian. Hannaham's contemporary South is a complicated place, where lust makes people strange, and love comes in more varieties than man-woman couplings. Through Gray's example, Hannaham shows how God might say "no" to Christians' rejection of homosexuality. The novel's so good, though, that God might just say "yes" to it.
Read the Full Review @ The Jackson Free Press
by Walter Biggins
James Hannaham's novel "God Says No" (McSweeney's, 2009, $22) chronicles the coming-of-age of Gary Gray, a man who loves Jesus and Disney World in almost equal measures. But he loves his college roommate, Russ, almost as much as he loves Christ, and not at all in the same way. For an overweight black man dreaming of the Christian life in Orlando, that dormant homosexuality is a lit firecracker ready to go off in his hands.
The novel works both as a wicked satire of conservative Christianity and as a sensitive portrait of a struggling Christian. Hannaham's contemporary South is a complicated place, where lust makes people strange, and love comes in more varieties than man-woman couplings. Through Gray's example, Hannaham shows how God might say "no" to Christians' rejection of homosexuality. The novel's so good, though, that God might just say "yes" to it.
Read the Full Review @ The Jackson Free Press
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