A Map of the Harbor Islands by J. G. Hayes (2006)
Requirements: MOBI / ePUB reader, 1.8 Mb
Overview: A moving story about friends-one gay and one not-and the power of redemption, growth, and love!
A Map of the Harbor Islands is the long-awaited novel from J. G. Hayes, the critically acclaimed bestselling author of This Thing Called Courage and Now Batting for Boston. This book charts the turbulent life courses of two South Boston friends, Danny O’Connor and Petey Harding, from their childhoods through their adult lives. ‘Golden Boy’ Petey has it all going for him-brains, charisma, and his close friendship with Danny. Then an accident on the baseball field changes everything. Petey wakes from a coma a different person, completely different from the boy Danny knew and loved. Gone are the old habits, the old joy of baseball, the old way of thinking. Petey is left with a stutter and a new appreciation for life that Danny sometimes just cannot understand. Petey begins to tell stories and make maps-dragging a grudging Danny along. Over the years Danny begins to understand Petey, and slowly, he also begins to learn more about himself. Then Petey confesses that he is gay, which sends Danny on an odyssey he never dreamed could happen.
Petey’s map is one of hope for Danny and him, to escape the urban ghetto of South Boston. They are two wayfaring "bestest friends" who swear a love for one another until the very end. A Map of the Harbor Islands carries the reader on a journey into the beauty of the world, physically and emotionally, along a current of love, friendship, self-growth, and redemption. The prose is all J. G. Hayes-metaphysical, moving-and always real. Of the book, Steve Susoyev, author of People Farm writes, "This has touched me in a way only two or three others have — full of hope and heartbreak and love and realness. An amazing work."
From the novel:
It was deep in the green tangle of June. Not that there were any more trees in South Boston then than there are now-it’s the least vegetated part of the city, I read that just recently. So what there was of green stood out all the more. Shimmery. The neon tufts of grass beside the buckled continental plates of sidewalks, and you’d always have to look, like pubic hair on the very young and the very old, that much of an emerald surprise. The explosion of sumac and ailanthus from ends of alleys, from mere fissures in industrial parking lots. Squirming unstoppable some of the up from miasmic subway vents and where are their roots, you ponder. Springtimes, you’d almost swear the smokestacks and asphalt roofs, the soot-draped fill trucks that rattle-roared through the West Side at night, took on a softer color in sympathy with the reputed rebirth of the world, elsewhere. But we lived in community then.
Find A Map of the Harbor Islands and chart a journey with two friends you will never forget.
Genre: MM Fiction, coming-of-age
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“With A Map of the Harbor Islands J. G. Hayes has stepped to the front ranks of young American authors. In this his first novel (he has two successful volumes of short stories, This Thing Called Courage and Now Batting for Boston) he demonstrates that all of the bright promises of a unique voice so evident in his stories about growing up gay in South Boston have been startlingly well fulfilled. This is a man whose mind is not only rich in stories and characters. but also is a gifted wordsmith who has a liquid language that effortlessly traces the lilt and flow of Irish-American expression as filtered through the air and streets of South Boston.
It would be unfair to limit the classification of Hayes’ output as gay literature, though he is certainly one of the most important writers of gay books in a field of fine compatriots. His newest writing in A Map of the Harbor Islands is on the same level as Michael Cunningham, Mark Doty, Edmund White. KM Schoelein, Jamie O’Neill, and the full range of both Irish and Irish-American authors in style and in ability to communicate meaningful stories, whether gay oriented or not. That he is writing so successfully about the tough times of gay youths in a homophobic neighborhood is a wonder and very much to his credit.
Once read, the ebb and flow o the magic of Hayes’ writing lingers like a lovely Irish poem or tune. Hayes’ descriptions of atmospheres are simply wondrous: ‘… the vermilion sunset, which lies along the shore like a throbbing smudge’ or ‘… the beach is empty at this inbetween-ish hour, drippy with day and night. A thin time, as Mrs. Harding would say. A time when anything is possible.’ He places words and phrases in the mouths of the mothers of the two boys that sing with that special lilt only the Irish can evoke. This is a novel that when the final page is read leaves the reader with that sensation of sadness that the story is over, but also with the surprising realization that Hayes writes so extremely well that every motive, every change, every happening is planted with seeds throughout the book and that in retrospect we the reader should have known all along just how things would resolve. Petey’s altered world is a magnificent realm that bears re-entering time and time again. A Map of The Harbor Islands is one of those books to read again and again— and hopefully J. G. Hayes will send another along very soon. He is a gentle, articulate master of fiction. A helluva book, this!”— Grady Harp
Author, War Songs
