Edinburgh: A Novel
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| Author | Alexander Chee |
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| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | Picador USA |
| Released | 2001 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 209 p. (hardback edition) & 240 p. (paperback edition) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-312-30503-6 (paperback edition) |
Edinburgh is a debut novel by gay author Alexander Chee
Edinburgh is a deeply moving novel about the damage inflicted by a child molester on a young boy. It is a coming-of-age story that shows how someone can survive childhood abuse and devastating loss to emerge strong and secure.
Aphias Zhe is a Korean American boy growing up in Maine and is the narrator of the story. He is aged twelve when the story begins, on the cusp of puberty. Fee auditions for a boys choir and is selected along with a blond boy called Peter, who becomes his best friend and first love and nicknames him Fee.
Eric Gorendt is the choir director and is nicknamed Big Eric and Eric Johannsen, an attractive blond boy in the choir is nicknamed Little Eric. After five months in the choir, Fee is made a section leader of the first sopranos and has made friends with Little Eric and Zach Guitz, the other two section leaders. Big Eric organises a camping trip for the three section leaders, starts talking about Libertarianism and nudism on the journey, then persuades the boys to strip off for swimming. He then starts taking photographs. That night,the four share a tent, sleeping naked and Little Eric and Zach start touching Fee's genitals. Fee discovers that Big Eric is openly molesting the two other boys, sharing sleeping bags with them in turn. Fee finds that he enjoys kissing Little Eric.
At the choir's summer camp, Fee ends up in cabin 2. All of Big Eric's favourites, the pretty blond boys, are in cabin 1 with Eric and they have an hour's naked reading every night. Peter is in cabin 2, but still Fee cannot bring himself to say anything. Peter is molested by Big Eric and later accuses Fee have having known what was happening and having watched the abuse - 'you were there'. Fee admits he knew what had happened, saying, 'He's done it to me too'. In cabin 2, Zach and Fee kiss and have oral sex in the bathroom while the other boys are asleep. Later that summer, Fee wants to warn Peter never to be alone with Big Eric, but cannot make himself say anything.
Ralph, Big Eric's eleven-year-old foster child, is found drowned after a storm. The official story is that he must have climbed into a boat, fallen asleep and it drifted out into the lake and then capsized. Fee knows the truth 'It's no mystery why Ralph took a boat alone into the center of the lake during a storm'. But he still doesn't tell.
Fee determines to learn about pedophilia from library books like Homosexuality in Ancient Greece. He now knows that Big Eric is a pedophile. He talks to Peter about it. Fee is now even more afraid to tell, having read in a nnewspaper article how a pedophile, fearing discovery, can turn to murder. Fee also doesn't want anyone else to tell, scared at what his parents and others would say. Peter says 'I want him dead. I want it to end'. Fee begs him to say nothing and he agrees 'For now'.
As his intimacy with Zach grows, Fee starts to realise that Big Eric and himself are not alike. 'I thought I knew what Big Eric was. I thought I knew because I thought it was the same as me. We are both in love with boys'. He also now knows that Big Eric, 'sees that I know, we are not the same'. Big Eric gives Fee a solo part, one of the ways he selects his victims, and the abuse starts to affect Fee's behaviour at home and school. Big Eric threatens to throw him out of the choir if he doesn't pretend he's fine. Big Eric then produces a book of child pornography and Fee tries to resist his advances.
When he is aged thirteen and the choir is on tour, Fee eventually tells Peter he loves him, but Peter is not interested. He just wants Fee as a friend. The tour is then aborted, because eventually one of the boys, Freddy Moran, tells on Big Eric. Freddy went to his own room where he found Big Eric lying naked on the bed, erect and fondling himself. Big Eric had also drugged Little Eric who was lying naked and unconscious on the floor. Freddy ran from the room and called his mother.
Big Eric was charged with twelve counts, twelve different boys, and was sent to jail with his wife also being convicted. Their infant son, Edward, goes into foster care, and then to his grandparents. Peter has to change schools when the story comes out and seven months later, in August, commits suicide, aged thirteen. Peter dowses himself with petrol and sets himself alight. In his suicide notes, he reveals he has been thinking of suicide since he was eleven years old. Peter, ever thoughtful, took a Polaroid photograph and himself and Fee the day before he died and gave it to Fee.
Fee and Zach see each other only occasionally through this summer, but one day Zach asks to meet Fee in a greenhouse. Fee arrives to discover that Zach has shot himself through the head with his father’s shotgun. As he grows up, Fee himself has a half-hearted attempt at suicide.
Half way through the novel, the narrative switches and is told from the perspective of Edward ‘Warden’ Gorendt, a sixteen-year-old junior at a private school in Maine. Fee is appointed as the new assistant swim coach and Warden becomes infatuated with him. Warden has been brought up by his grandparents and does not know his father’s crimes until he receives a letter from his grandparents explaining that his father is a pedophile and convicted child sexual abuser. This news makes the boy physically sick.
Warden visits Disney and studies the faces and bodies of pretty young boys, but cannot understand how they could be sex objects. Out one night, Warden spies that Fee has been to the new chapel and he discovers that Fee had hidden a photograph near the base of the alter in the new chapel. Warden takes it. Later, Warden visits a clairvoyant and shows her the picture – of a blond boy dated 1983. The clairvoyant tells him "it’s burning" and tells him to get rid of the picture.
Gradually Warden gets to know Mr Zhe and Bridey, his live-in partner. Warden also receives a letter from his father and he starts throwing up on a regular basis and losing weight. The doctors cannot find anything wrong. A phone-line counsellor tells him he is gay, but he doesn’t believe it although he tells the man that he loves Mr Zhe.
His father is tagged and released from Prison and his grandparents bring him over to meet Warden. Warden finally lures Fee to a house where he house-sitting and Fee has sex with him. The boy is seventeen.
The narrative then switches and Fee is once again the narrator, though some passages are written from the perspective of an imaginary third person, possibly Peter. He hears the news that Freddy Moran has AIDS, and he describes the first time he sees Warden’s beautiful blond hair. He starts to fall for Warden and this puts a strain on his relationship with Bridey. He responds to a note that he thinks is from Bridey and meets up instead with Warden. Warden hands him the photo of Peter and asks him where he got it. He tells Warden, "I was in love with someone, and I knew he’d never love me, so I took the picture". Warden replies, "Me too". They then start a passionate sexual relationship. The boy is seventeen.
Warden discovers the photographs that his father took of the boys he molested and finds some of Aphias Zhe, first soprano. He then kills his father and Fee arrives to see the body on the floor. Fee tries to persuade Warden to hand himself in, but Warden sets the building alight and the death is reported as an accident. Fee realises that the relationship cannot continue and returns to Bridey.
