This story follows two college students - Paul and Julian - in 1970s Pittsburgh as they meet, fall into a relationship, and spiral downward together until there is no turning back. Paul is the quiet student, insecure and sensitive, from a single parent household. Julian is the opposite - effortlessly charming and wealthy. The two strike up an unlikely friendship that quickly turns to more. Their relationship burns hot and quick and, in an effort to keep them together, they commit an act of violence together so they would always have something to bind them. However, that single act ends up driving a wedge between them and the two may never recover. CW/TW: suicide, toxic relationship, animal death
From the description, I was thinking this book would sort of be along the same lines as a Bonnie and Clyde type dynamic but it was so much more than that. We spend a lot of time getting to know Paul both before and during his relationship with Julian. There is so much emotion built into the story but done in such a way as to also build up the tension. The character work in this regard is fantastic - there is so much history that we don't get to see before the story starts but we can see the ripples changing the current story. Paul and Julian's relationship in the 1970s is frowned upon at best. Paul's father committed suicide and his mother is trying to do her best raising Paul and his sister while also balancing her own grief and societal expectations. In the end, she just wants her son to be happy and safe and she's just trying her best. I also liked how integral Paul's family was to the plot. I think in a lot of stories with younger protagonists, the families are often very distant (I know this is a running joke with many YA books, for example). In this case, I really liked how the family element was, at different times, working with and against Paul and Julian's relationship. It adds an extra layer of characterization and, later, tension in the story that is so naturally integrated because of the parent/child relationship.
The pacing was phenomenal. The book opens with them getting into a car with another person and there's a vaguely threatening atmosphere so we know where the story is headed. We don't see the outcome of the situation with the other man but we get the feeling it isn't good. Then, we flash back to Paul and Julian meeting in ethics class for the first time and the story progresses linearly from there. I think the choice of having the opening scene be so explicitly dangerous was a great choice because as we see the little cracks form in Paul and their relationship as the story ramps up, the reader has that scene in mind. Smaller events that may ordinarily be brushed off or not really thought a lot about suddenly become more important because the reader is thinking "is this how it starts?" We get this small glimpses and escalating actions that ramp up to the central climax of the story and then we have to deal with the fall out which is somehow even more tense than the build up. In the last third of the story, I was really getting the same feeling like when you see Romeo and Juliet for the first time - you know exactly how this is going to end (badly) but you can't help hoping that this time, just this one time, the characters will end up fine and that hope really keeps you turning the pages. We don't know how Paul and Julian's story will end, but from the tone and the events so far, it doesn't feel like it will be a good one but both the reader and the characters are holding on to the hope that things will work out.
The prose leaned way more into the literary fiction sphere than I was
expecting. I was expecting this to be more along the lines of a
thriller centered around a toxic relationship. I think the more lit-fic
elements were worked in really well with the atmosphere of dread I got
while reading. The prose was beautiful and, at times, veered into 'flowery' but a lot of times these beautiful prose moments were discussing some of the darkest points of the story. The balance was fantastic and as someone who doesn't really love stereotypical lit-fic prose or style, this hit the perfect mix for me. It reminded me a lot of The Taxidermist's Lover by Polly Hall, which was my favorite book I read last year. It also had a very similar hauntingly beautiful writing style and very macabre subject matter.
This story is told from Paul's POV and it was interesting to see one side of a toxic and obsessive relationship. They never really use the label of 'boyfriends' but they spend all their time together, are intimate together, and love each other. Both have and are struggling to deal with their own baggage and how they can grow into their own selves. At first, we see Paul as this quiet, reserved guy and it almost seems like Julian brings Paul out of his shell. But as we see more of their relationship dynamic, it isn't clear exactly if they are changing each other or if they just finally have someone they can be their true selves around. It is an interesting sort of slippery slope they find themselves in where once they start going down the wrong path together, they can't stop and turn back. By the climax of the story, it really feels that Paul is mostly driving the actions they take and we get his reasoning why since we are in his POV. I think getting Julian's POV on these events would have been really interesting because it sure seemed that he was the less-invested of the two at least in regards to their plans together. Julian has a lot of his own family problems that we don't get to see first hand because we're always filtered through Paul's view of Julian. I think a lot of times with these types of stories we would get both POVs to see how each side feels about the events or how things are working out but in this case we only get Julian filtered through Paul's view which I really enjoyed. This way, when Paul was questioning Julian's feelings or actions, we the reader were questioning right along side because we had no more information than Paul did - more layers of tension.
Overall, this was a fantastic read - a haunting, beautiful, macabre, heartbreaking, emotional journey of a first relationship that crosses a line and tries so hard to go back to how things were before.
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