Book 846: The Lavender Menace – Tom Cardamone (Ed.)

UGH. I wanted to like this so much more than I did. I remember the excitement when I stumbled across it seven years ago at PAX East in the LGBT lounge. I guess I either forgot the premise or didn’t really read the full premise of the book so ended up slightly disappointed.

Don’t get me wrong there were definitely a few stories I very much enjoyed (more the redemptive ones) and there was some great writing throughout the novel, but there were some larger issues with the collection that may reflect when it was originally published (2013) and how far we’ve come as a society, and also the background of the editor (cis white gay man).

I think the biggest elephant in the pack is the title and many people highlighted this on Goodreads. The title is taken from Betty Friedan’s coined phrase to highlight the threat of lesbian women taking over the National Organization of Women (NOW). So, it was already problematic, but when you consider there’s not a single female author in the group and there were no named female characters for the first 3-4 stories and few-if-any played a role across the board, yeah problematic. And this is further reiterated with the subtitle “Tales of Queer Villainy.” Again, most of the writers, I believe one may be of Asian descent, are white gay men diversity is a problem. this seems like appropriation of two terms that yes can be associated with gay men, but really are probably much better associated with other members within the LGBT+ movement.

My earliest criminal exploits went virtually unnoticed. My abilities were pretty limited and didn’t lend themselves to public display, or the sort of theatrics that would later typify my best work. But I had to try something because I had a power, and in this world if you have a power, you do one or the other. You either hurt people, or you save them. I never really got on well with people. To be honest, I never had a particular interest in helping them. (“Your Changing Body . . .” by Matt Fagan)

Now on to the stories themselves, for the most part they were pretty meh and this has little-if-anything to do with the homogenous authorship. They just weren’t that great. It takes a lot to craft a short story that has gravitas or oomph or leaves the reader feeling some sort of emotion. I think that’s one of the reasons you rarely see short stories being published, it’s an art form few can really conquer and make an impact with.

This being said, there were four stories that stuck with me and it comes as no surprise that they’re in the middle of the book, Cardamone must’ve also seen they were the strongest of the works:

•  “The Meek Shall Inherit” by Jamie Freeman
  • There was so much pain and drama in the protagonist of this story and it basically reminded me of a supernatural version of The Handmaid’s Tale and the ending was deviously wonderful and gut wrenching. Why was I identifying so much with the bad guy?!
• “After Balenciaga” by Marshall Moore
  • This one was so creepy. It was probably the most “boring”, but there was an eerily perfect evil to the entire book. There were no masterful plots of the bad guy, just a simple story that had creepy twists and turns.
• “Lesser Evil” by Nathan Burgoine
  • This is about under-estimating the underdog. There was also a sadness that overwhelmed the entire story that I think was incredibly well done. It really echoed the loneliness and despair that many LGBT individuals feel as they’re figuring out their sexuality and/or coming out, especially those in rural communities.
• “The Plan” by Charles ‘Zan’ Christensen
  • This one was perfect for me. It comes from all the romances I read, but the revenge plot that was both hilarious and adorably not-evil and the lead up to it were well written. However, what really sealed it for me was the ending of the story which circled back to the beginning and the reveal that you totally expect but desperately think might not happen does and just yes.

And the last thing I’ll say, which is just piling it on at this point is the formatting of the book was incredibly annoying. EVERY OTHER BOOK starts each story on the right side of the page. It makes sense it’s clean it’s crisp, but nope EVERY single new section started on the left side of the page and it just seemed so wasteful (so many blank right pages) and frankly it was incredibly jarring. Maybe that was the point to be “queer” but really it was just annoying to me.

Recommendation: Honestly, I was underwhelmed with most of the stories. I truly enjoyed roughly 1/3 of them and the rest were just meh. They weren’t bad but they just weren’t that great. The editor did a decent job of varying the plot points, but when you take in the overall diversity and representation issues in authors and characters it doesn’t really balance it out. Maybe seek out the four I mention, or if you really want to read the entire collection give it a go, but this isn’t really a “must read.”