Post by Robin on Jan 11, 2006 16:44:40 GMT -8
This is a synopsis of the story I've been pimping for awhile. It's too long to make people read, so I'll ask for opinions on my synopsis/summary thing.
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Set in 1990's New England, the story follows the story of a man entering middle age without much to show for his life. He lives in a small house, paying the rent with welfare and unemployment checks as well as whatever money he can beg off of his friends.
He is addicted to alcohol and marijuana, and this shadows his life as well as an insecurity about his sexual orientation. He was raped during his early twenties by a man who he had believed to be his best friend, and has since declined viciously. When the story opens, his only companion is a black man haunted by his own demons who is really only his friend for the free marijuana that the man, Tobias Shepard, gives him.
As the story progresses, Tobias's life spirals out of control with a visit from the man who raped him. Distraught, he visits a bar and is restrained from getting into a fight with another man in the bar by a man named Adrian Parrish. Adrian becomes the only stable leg of Tobias's life, and he serves as a confidante to Tobias throughout the story. After a confrontation with the man who raped him, Adrian and his family take Tobias into their home for short period of time while he recuperates both emotionally and physically.
While the story focues on Tobias, the story of Robert Dolman, the man who raped Tobias, is also told. Robert lives in a nice apartment with his love interest, Elena Madden, although his life is also endangered when, after a stressful day and a confusing few moments of foreplay with Elena, he rapes her.
When Elena becomes pregnant from this forced coupling, Robert kicks her out of the apartment in another moment of bewilderment and rage, thus forcing her to go find a new place to live. Fittingly, she is taken in by Tobias Shepard, and they develop a close relationship, although Tobias is really interested in Brenda Parrish, Adrian Parrish's seventeen year old daughter, and Gloria Parrish, Adrian's wife.
After a confusing time, the then seven-months-pregnant Elena and Tobias visit a bar and are followed by a nerve-wracked, distressed Robert. His guilt about the prior incidents with Elena and Tobias had caused him to have a breakdown, and though he isn't insane, he is mentally unstable, although that's no surprise, because he had been temperamentally unstable for most of the story.
When Elena and Tobias walk out of the bar around midnight, they are frightened by a gangfight happening nearby. They are even more frightened when they see that Robert had been caught in the crossfire.
Robert is shot in the stomach, and the gangs, who had only been letting off steam, flee. Elena and Tobias, despite their past troubles with Robert, run to his side and listen to his last laments, hoping, perhaps for an apology. They don't hear one, and neither of them think to call an ambulance. In about thirty minutes, Robert is dead, and Elena and Tobias don't feel any better about themselves.
They flee the scene, and the novel closes after a few chapters in which Elena and Tobias attempt to remedy their hurts, and become romantically involved with each other to help the pain (they don't, of course, actually DO it - she's seven months pregnant, it wouldn't really work). By the end of the novel, they haven't worked out their problems, but they don't feel half as bad.
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Set in 1990's New England, the story follows the story of a man entering middle age without much to show for his life. He lives in a small house, paying the rent with welfare and unemployment checks as well as whatever money he can beg off of his friends.
He is addicted to alcohol and marijuana, and this shadows his life as well as an insecurity about his sexual orientation. He was raped during his early twenties by a man who he had believed to be his best friend, and has since declined viciously. When the story opens, his only companion is a black man haunted by his own demons who is really only his friend for the free marijuana that the man, Tobias Shepard, gives him.
As the story progresses, Tobias's life spirals out of control with a visit from the man who raped him. Distraught, he visits a bar and is restrained from getting into a fight with another man in the bar by a man named Adrian Parrish. Adrian becomes the only stable leg of Tobias's life, and he serves as a confidante to Tobias throughout the story. After a confrontation with the man who raped him, Adrian and his family take Tobias into their home for short period of time while he recuperates both emotionally and physically.
While the story focues on Tobias, the story of Robert Dolman, the man who raped Tobias, is also told. Robert lives in a nice apartment with his love interest, Elena Madden, although his life is also endangered when, after a stressful day and a confusing few moments of foreplay with Elena, he rapes her.
When Elena becomes pregnant from this forced coupling, Robert kicks her out of the apartment in another moment of bewilderment and rage, thus forcing her to go find a new place to live. Fittingly, she is taken in by Tobias Shepard, and they develop a close relationship, although Tobias is really interested in Brenda Parrish, Adrian Parrish's seventeen year old daughter, and Gloria Parrish, Adrian's wife.
After a confusing time, the then seven-months-pregnant Elena and Tobias visit a bar and are followed by a nerve-wracked, distressed Robert. His guilt about the prior incidents with Elena and Tobias had caused him to have a breakdown, and though he isn't insane, he is mentally unstable, although that's no surprise, because he had been temperamentally unstable for most of the story.
When Elena and Tobias walk out of the bar around midnight, they are frightened by a gangfight happening nearby. They are even more frightened when they see that Robert had been caught in the crossfire.
Robert is shot in the stomach, and the gangs, who had only been letting off steam, flee. Elena and Tobias, despite their past troubles with Robert, run to his side and listen to his last laments, hoping, perhaps for an apology. They don't hear one, and neither of them think to call an ambulance. In about thirty minutes, Robert is dead, and Elena and Tobias don't feel any better about themselves.
They flee the scene, and the novel closes after a few chapters in which Elena and Tobias attempt to remedy their hurts, and become romantically involved with each other to help the pain (they don't, of course, actually DO it - she's seven months pregnant, it wouldn't really work). By the end of the novel, they haven't worked out their problems, but they don't feel half as bad.