Brokeback Mountain

Annie Proulx

I whipped through this tiny novel in an attempt to get my total reads for the year into the high 30s. Three a month should be achievable. Though I know the Rev and Sarra and several others are way out of sight.

Also it seemed like an intriguing premise. Two young men herding stock in a lonely part of the American mid-west enjoy a summer of sex before going their separate ways. Cue, in most of the reviews I could find, a hum of excitement at an upcoming film and, in most cases, reviewers who can't wait to be outraged by Hollywood's degayification of the storyline.

The interesting thing is what Annie Proulx does with the rest of the story. Our two lovers grow up and grow older and acquire wives and families and all the rest. Instead of turning the story into, perhaps, a conventional story of lives lived in the shadow of a terrible secret buried deep in the past, something else happens. The men continue to meet and make love, in secret, sometimes after a gap of several years. And the story explores how such a love affair might be made to work. In such an unlikely setting it makes for rather a strange and moving story of passion.