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Ziggy, Stardust and Me by James Brandon (from a Two Thumbs Up reviewer)

Saturday, Aug 31, 2019 at 4:23pm

Ziggy, Stardust and Me hurts and it is not gentle with its punches. Reading Ziggy, Stardust & Me was like having my head jammed under pit black currents, with nothing but the feeling of suffocation and helplessness for company. It was unpleasant and I don’t want to experience any of it again, but also I do because nothing is more blinding than drowning in the dark. I’ll be brief for this one, Jonathan’s, our narrator, voice is so fervent, brilliant, and weightless. He led me through such a wild range of emotions, you name them, I experienced them. At some point the words on the page sizzled and morphed into an actual human-shaped being.

Brandon is a master at characterization, for him, my hat is off and my wig is somewhere on the moon. I don’t think I’ve fully stumbled across a Native American character on the page before (I have my finger-crossed that the foreseeable future will be very different). I found myself once again in debt to Brandon for Web. What to say to a boy who claws and fights and tears his way out in life? What to do when life doesn’t spit on you like it does him and is actually some kind of nightmare that you can wake up from while he is stuck in a broken record that loops and loops? For Web, I want to shower him with love. I want to glue him on a cloud and feed him nothing but cotton candy. But who am I kidding, Web probably choose to escape to space instead, where he’ll wait until the Earth exploded to come back and laugh at us all. Jonathan and Web is an electric current that builds and builds, I was utterly breathless every time these two are shoved together, perhaps even died a little; I couldn’t ask for a better pairing dynamic myself. To quote E. M. Forster regarding his novel, Maurice: “I was determined that in fiction anyway two men should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows, and in this sense, Maurice and Alec still roam the greenwood.” In Jonathan and Web’s case then, they too will be in love and happy together forever and ever under these pages. I shall have nothing less of it.

I highly recommend this beautiful piece of Art for anyone, though make sure that you are in the right headspace for it and noted that even if you do, it will still hurt. Major content warnings for homophobia, homophobic and racial slurs, domestic/physical violence, off-page parental death(s), mild depiction of systematic violence against Native Americans, pedophilia, non-graphic depiction of child sexual abuse. To make myself, and the rest of you (thank you for not being turned off by my sudden poetic explosion) feel better, I’ll leave this beautiful quote here. It’s not from the book but I’m sure the book and James Brandon himself would heartily approve and want you to know this, too.
“We live through times when hate and fear seem stronger.

We rise and fall, and light from dying embers

Remembrances that hope and love last longer.

And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love;

Cannot be killed or swept aside.

...

Now fill the world with music, love, and pride.”

— An excerpt from Lin Manuel Miranda’s Tony 2016 Acceptance Speech.

-Ella, a Two Thumbs Up reviewer

Categories: Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Two Thumbs Up

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