Forever Marathon by Jameson Currier

Reviewer: Alan Chin

Publisher: Chelsea Station Editions

Pages: 210

I’ve lived through two twenty-year relationships, and almost all of my close friends are in multi-decade partnerships. I know first hand that no relationship is easy and that all couples fight, no matter how much they love each other. Jameson Currier, in his Forever Marathon novel, takes an in-depth, forty-eight-hour peek into a challenging relationship.

Jesse and Adam have spent twenty-four cantankerous years together, through ups and downs, through all the whining and bitching, and through countless petty fights and major battles. They are finically set, throw fabulous parties, and are the envy of their friends. Their friends, however, can’t see how miserable they are. Now on the backside of their forties, they are running out of time if they are to find happiness. But first they must figure out what happiness looks like, and determine if it is attainable or simply a myth created by the media industry.

Mr. Currier had accomplished something truly remarkable: He has presented two highly unlikeable, self-absorbed, clichéd characters, and woven them into an interesting story that keeps the reader turning pages. He does that by making Jesse and Adam so real they resonate within the reader.  We’ve all known couples like them, the ones we joking call ‘The Bickersons’, and we’ve all wondered what goes on when they are alone. Mr. Currier gives us an hour-by-hour examination of how far a couple will go in a game of one-upmanship, taking a petty fight into all out war.

Jesse and Adam are the gay version of George and Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, with enough humor thrown in to match Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas in War of the Roses. The story swings from present to backstory like a pendulum, giving a great deal (perhaps too much?) of the couple’s history.

Currier has presented, in my opinion, an honest depiction of middle-aged gay men in a long-term relationship. He gives keen insights into such relationships, and in the disappointments and fears of growing older. This is a funny, exasperating, touching read.

http://www.jamesoncurrier.com/

What Comes Around by Jameson Currier

Reviewer: Bob Lind, Echo Magazine 
Publisher: Chelsea Station Editions, November 2012, 
Pages: 170


Jameson Currier happens to be one of my favorite authors, and I relished his three previous novels, although he is perhaps best known by his diverse and captivating short stories that have appeared in various anthologies and other publications over the years. This work actually combines fifteen of his short stories, crafting them into chapters in a story of a single gay man and his failure to find a meaningful relationship. 

The stories were written over a period of many years, so it is fitting that a similar time period applies to the character depicted, starting with his first realization about his sexuality at age 15. The next chapter follows the young man ten years later, and subsequent installments show the character maturing, having various sexual encounters, though still unsuccessful in finding a potential lifemate. 

It was a little confusing to me that the stories were written in the second person, which I can only guess was meant to add some distance from the reader to the character, as if a disjointed voyeur through his disappointing love life. That disappointment, although realistic, became a bit tedious for me at times, and I kept assuming he would eventually find the love of his life. It was also a bit depressing to read the seemingly desperate measures that the character took in his later years. 

Not really a "fun" read, but an interesting and realistic character study by a talented, creative author. I give it four stars out of five.


http://www.jamesoncurrier.com/

The Third Buddha by Jameson Currier

Reviewer: Alan Chin
Publisher: Chelsea Station Editions
Pages: 322

Ted Bridges, a twenty-something law student, drops out of school and moves to New York to look for his brother, Phillip (“Pup”) who disappeared the day the World Trade Center towers fell. Ted moves into Pup’s Chelsea apartment and tries to piece together his dead brother’s life. Both brothers are gay, but very different. Pup was out and loved to socialize, loved being gay. Ted is closeted and has had little to no sexual experience with other men. Through the process of living in his brother’s shadow, what starts as a search for his brother turns into a search for his own sexual identity. Learning about his sibling and what it means to be gay through Pup’s friends and ex-lovers, Ted, over a period of several months, becomes his own man living a gay lifestyle.

Half a world away in a different decade, two international journalists, Ari and Jim, travel in Afghanistan. They are separated after their vehicle explodes from a roadside bomb. Ari awakes with no memory. He is taken in by hill-tribe Muslims and, for a time, becomes one of them. Jim recovers in an army hospital, and later pulls strings in order to travel back into dangerous Taliban controlled Afghanistan to find his lover, Ari.

These are two very dissimilar stories, both about searching for a loved one, but still very different in character and nature. Ted’s story is told in first person, Ari and Jim’s story is told in third person. These tales are very loosely linked by a few minor characters who live in New York, friends of Pup.

Many stories I’ve read that swing between two or more different plots has one story that intrigues me, and the other doesn’t. The Third Buddha was no exception to this rule. I found Ted’s search to be poignant and fascinating. I felt his pain and confusion, and was pulling for him all the way through his wonderfully convincing character arc.

Jim and Ari’s story I found flat, overly predictable, and often tedious. Currier did a marvelous job of creating a realistic environment of war-torn Afghanistan, and the writing was certainly accomplished, but the author keeps the reader from getting too close to his characters in this part of the story. Currier constantly switches between Jim’s adventures, to Ari’s hardships, to flashbacks of their relationship before being separated (way too many flashbacks for my tastes). This constant fractured storytelling became frustrating. It felt to me like I was following the story from an altitude of ten-thousand feet when I wanted to be right there on the ground. It simply didn’t have the same intensity as Ted’s search for his brother. And the fact that it took no guesswork to figure out exactly what would happen didn’t help.

The title, “The third Buddha” refers to an archeological site in Afghanistan where scientists search for a giant statue of the Buddha. It is near this site where tribe’s people take in Ari. This search for the statue is used as a symbol of the ongoing pursuit for something bigger than ourselves. And, of course, that is what both these stories are about.

Jameson Currier is a talented writer who has created an important and thought-provoking book. These are credible characters who experience gut-twisting emotional hardships and victories. It is a book I can highly recommend, even if it doesn’t find a place on my “favorite’s” shelf.

http://www.jamesoncurrier.com/index.html