Jeremy Crowe

Let me just this: When Isabel Allende, a prominent Spanish-American author, reviewed this novel, she said it contained all of the elements of literature. And she's right; it does. What she doesn't say, however, is how Hosseini's narrative, comparable to Salinger's Holden Caulfield; the events, similar in brevity and intricacy/complexity to Carson McCullers; and the information, much like the enormous amount of whaling info you get from Melville's Moby-Dick, on the Afghan and Muslim culture are so dynamic, so intertwined, so much a part of this novel. It's almost too believable to be fiction. I cannot wait to get my hands on A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS. Hosseini is going to be huge, folks!

FIVE STARS.

I've only read two of the essays so far, and so far, I get a visual that most gay men have ineffectual, hateful, spiteful fathers. Fathers who, when they sense their sons are "different," intuit that they should just walk away and take the love with them. This book is supposed to be sequential-- meaning, of course, that the essays become more and more joyful and hopeful toward the end. I only hope that in the last essay I will not find a father and son in love. :)

The stories are as touching as they are abusive. When I finish it I will then make an assessment as to whether it receives the Jeremy Crowe Queer Lit Seal of Approval.

Magister Ludi is a wonderful novel. And it is no coincidence that Hesse earned the Nobel after having written it. It