Review: A Red Tainted Silence by Carolyn Gray
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 10 1, 2012
This is the classic example of a romance that takes you in spite of yourself.I buy nearly all the ebooks that Loose Id publishes in the M/M genre, and therefore I have bought also this book, moreover recommended by an American yahoo group which I participate.I have bought blindly, without really reading the plot or checking the length, and it is this last one that shocked me: I opened the book, in electronic format, at 10.00 p.m., thinking, as usual, to read it in one session, and with my great surprise and displeasure, I found instead that the book was more than 750 pages long!!! Impossible to read it in one shot and above all, did I want to begin such a long book?I put it aside for some evenings, and finally, with courage in my two hands, I have begun to read it: and then the book has made its magic. It is a heartbreaking story about two young people that meet and fall in love when they are about twenty years old, then spend the following 10 years on the ups and downs of their relation, and conclude the book still together, still fighting in order to make this relation work.The book begins from the end, or at least this is what the reader believes: Brandon is at the bedside of Nicholas, who is just after a kidnapping that wounded him in body and spirit, but they decide together that it is worthwhile overcoming their misunderstandings in order to build a future together. All is perfect, thinks the reader, this is the happily ever after of the book... but instead Brandon begins thinking of the past, of the errors he made in his relation with Nicholas, while at the same time in the present some unexpected switches occur.The reader finds himself hurled between present and past alternatively, and he cannot decide if he is more interested in understanding what happened in the past or what is happening in the present... both stories are closely tied, but also strangely far from each other: two parallel stories, but with enough strength to make them both important and enthralling.Brandon is the younger of the two, he was 17 when they met. He felt in love with Nicholas at first sight, and from that moment on, as he says, he has been prepared for the pain to come when finally he loses Nicholas; since the beginning Brandon is convinced that their story cannot last, Nicholas is too beautiful, too much centre - of - the - stage, too much cool, too much... everything, so that sooner or later he will realise that Brandon is not on his level and will leave him. Brandon sees himself like a simple shadow when compared to successful Nicholas; his deep inferiority sense not only make him see Nicholas through rose-tinted glasses, but also distorts his perception of himself. While he remembers of their past, painful, heartbreaking memories overwhelm him until his mind jams to get somehow rids of the sorrow; the reader can see it because, while at the beginning memories are precise and detailed, step by step, while the story goes on, they get more and more chaotic and haphazard. Moreover Brandon, towards the end, remembers only of the ugly moments and omits the happy ones, even if there must have been some of course, since his love for Nicholas is still so strong.At the moment of Brandon's black out, the story's front changes: till that moment it's Brandon speaking in first person, now it's up to Nicholas letting us discover Brandon's pain, understand his bitter awareness that he egoistically abandoned Brandon, just when Brandon was more needing him. Even if it's Nicholas the one who is physically suffering, and that we find since the beginning in a hospital's bed, Brandon suffered of unimaginable mental pains. It is through the words of Nicholas that we learn to know Brandon, the talented, the beautiful one, a kind and the faithful person. He'll never let Nicholas down, in spite of the uneasiness that their life together brings to him; he will leave only when Nicholas pronounces the words of their separation, but only to be back once again when Nicholas needs it. Nicholas, who is not as beautiful as Brandon sees him; Nicholas, who, even if two years his elder, is the more childish between the two of them. Nicholas, who while reading Brandon's diary, suddenly understands that something is wrong: why does Brandon speak only about their sad moments, when they had so many happy ones? And then, from his words, we start to learn about the pleasant moments of their life together.Close to the end the book focuses on the present, on Nicholas's fight to bring Brandon out of the dark abyss he felt deeply in. And it will be up to him, the same person who since the beginning Brandon believed would have put an end to their relation, fighting tooth and nail to keep the two of them together.