A Horse Named Sorrow

by Trebor Healey

"When troubled twenty-one-year-old Seamus Blake meets the enigmatic Jimmy (just arrived in San Francisco by bicycle from his hometown in Buffalo, New York), he feels his life may finally be taking off. But the ensuing romance proves short-lived as Jimmy dies of an AIDS-related illness. The grieving Seamus is obliged to keep a promise: "Take me back the way I came," Jimmy had asked. And so Seamus sets out by bicycle on a picaresque journey with the ashes, hoping to bring them back to Buffalo. He meets truck drivers, waitresses, Native Americans, college kids, farmers, ranchers, and Marines--each one giving him a new perspective on his own life and on Jimmy's death. When he falls in man whose mother has also recently died, Seamus's grief and his story become universal and redemptive. Award-winning novelist Trebor Healey depicts San Francisco in the 1980s and '90s in poetic prose that is both ribald and poignant, and a crossing into the American West that is dreamy, mythic, mystifying."--Publisher's description.

Genres: Fiction, LGBT, Gay, Queer, Historical, Gay Fiction, Contemporary

248 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Awarded the 2013 Publishing Triangle Ferro-Grumley Fiction Award for A Horse Named Sorrow, Trebor Healey is also the recipient of the Lambda Literary Foundation's 2013 Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelists' Prize and a Violet Quill Award for his first novel Through It Came Bright Colors. His other work includes a collection of poetry, Sweet Son of Pan, and three short story collections, A Perfect Scar & Other Stories, Eros & Dust and the just-released Falling, as well as the speculative fiction novel, Faun. As an editor, he has co-edited two anthologies: Queer & Catholic and Beyond Definition. He lives in Los Angeles and Mexico City. For more information, visit www.treborhealey.com.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

This story is a queer coming of adulthood tale, a cross country road trip, a vision quest manual, and a reflection on grief and romantic love and sex and finding one's balance by accepting when things and people pass. I didn't see all these facets when I began this book and almost put it away, thinking that the simplicity of language was merely simple, but once I got on the road with the main character, Seamus, I was all in.

[Alvin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The height of the AIDS epidemic was such a scary time and the loss of a loved one is such a sad thing, I was afraid reading this book would just drown me in misery. Amazingly, it didn't. Healey pulls off the amazing feat of transforming and taming sorrow through art - in this case a prose style that veers between witty and purple. Yes, the story had me crying a few times, but ultimately it's better to let yourself feel the sadness and remember because forgetting turns your heart to stone.

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I started out really liking the language and prose of this novel, it sort of tired me out after a while. There was a lot of repetition about the characters' appearances and bodies, which I normally don't mind in fiction, but it got a little purple-prosey after a bit. I loved the characters, although Seamus grated on me a bit after a while--Jimmy was heartbreaking and Eugene was so unique, I've never read a character quite like him before.

The story stalled for me during the last 50 pages or so. There isn't much to say about the plot that hasn't already been said, although some users seemed a little too quick in writing it off as fiction about AIDS...it is certainly queer fiction, but there's so much more than disease. There's a journey, spirituality, humor, love, and growth as well.

I did like this book, and I would recommend it--but don't be surprised if you start skimming a little.

[Hilcia · Rating 5 out of 5]

To a "lost soul" like Shame his horseboy Jimmy becomes a savior, a savior who dies on the AIDS cross for guilty sinners or survivors like him. In order to help with Jimmy's resurrection, Shame goes on the road carrying Jimmy's ashes, a pilgrimage that leads to understanding his own personal truth by retracing Jimmy's journey home and embracing Eugene's silence.

With prose that shifts from the poetic to the mundane, in A Horse Named Sorrow, Trebor Healey creates a vibrant, sexy, deeply emotional journey filled with color, memorable characters, humor, the horrors of the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco during the early '90s, and spirituality that grabs the reader by the throat at the beginning and keeps squeezing until the very end. Highly recommended.

[Gerhard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Writing about AIDS in a post-apocalypse gay society poses a particular trap for a gay writer, in that by reliving the past he could be accused of ignoring the exigencies of the present, which has its own immediate and pressing problems. The past is dead and buried.

Yet there is a distinct danger in forgetting the past, and the sacrifices and hardships endured by those in firing the crucible that shaped our modern gay world. We can never take any form of liberty for granted, for then we will never appreciate its true value. Especially if it is taken away again.

Of course, the AIDS crisis is of specific significance to the gay community in the US, which is vastly different to that in the Middle East and elsewhere in Africa, for example (where people are still dying and suffering for what many First World, European gay people take so for granted).

What I loved about A Horse Named Sorrow is that Trebor Healey tells a story about the mythical gay utopia of San Francisco, and the black pall that falls upon it, and turns this into a universal tale of love found and lost.

I defy anyone, straight or gay, to read this dry-eyed, and not to fall in love with Seamus Blake and Jimmy Keane (and not to be turned on by their wild love). To qualify this last comment: I happened to be reading The Lost Library by Tom Cardamone at the same time, in which Michael Graves comments that “amply described blowjobs and anal scenes may stigmatise gay writers”.

Healey has written a deeply gay novel, drenched in gay aesthetic, and all sorts of other fluids, both bodily and spiritual, but at the same time it can be read quite comfortably by non-gay people, particularly those who are squeamish about the mechanics of gay-male sexuality.

Healey is deliberately vague in the ample sex scenes, but imbues them with copious amounts of love and masculinity. (There is also a deeply subversive riff on Christianity, and how the pure love shown by Christ can be an exemplar for the pure love between two people – of whatever gender or orientation. Love, compassion and humanity are all that matter).

This is basically an anthem to love and loss. Seamus meets the love of his life, and loses him too soon to AIDS. Jimmy’s dying wish was to return to from whence he came, and Seamus vows to retrace his soul mate’s journey from Buffalo to San Francisco, via bicycle, with Jimmy’s ashes in a bag on the handlebars.

Yes, it sounds as quixotic and as faintly ridiculous as David Lynch’s The Straight Story (only a much gayer version), but Healey uses this simple framework to build a deeply affecting and unforgetting story.

The writing here is luminous. At one point Healey deliberately references Tom Spanbauer, and I think this is very much a homage to the lushness of Spanbauer’s ‘dangerous writing’. What is important about this novel though is that it goes far beyond an account of dealing with the grief of losing a loved one.

Seamus meets Eugene on the road, and falls in love with him because he reminds him of Jimmy. Seamus, of course, is ashamed at his body’s needs, and conflicted by the love he felt for Jimmy, which he thought precluded feeling anything for anyone ever again. His journey towards final redemption, and the end of his epic quest to see Jimmy safely home again, is both heart-breaking and deeply spiritual.

The weird commingling of pain and joy of reading this was so intense and contradictory at times that I had to put the book down at several points. I am so glad I persevered though, for this is a truly great novel that deserves to be embraced and loved back by a much wider audience.

[Tom Bentley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good one, one part Don Quixote and one part The Odyssey in how it smoothly moves between hilarity and heartbreak. The story of two gay men who meet in San Francisco and become lovers, just as the AIDS crisis ("the acronym" as the author calls it) kicks into high gear. Seamus, the first-person protagonist is sweet, goofy, stumbling and sincere (with a small cynical side for spice), and his quest to return his lover's ashes, by bicycle, to Buffalo shifts the work into a road story.

Indeed, there are tastes of Kerouac in the book, sentence flavors that smack of his tang. Very nice rhythmic cadences, poetic ones, in the book's language, without being too writerly. The final pages have a lovely cascade of fevered impressions and exultations that put me in mind of the Book of Revelations and the final pages of Hesse's Siddhartha. Nice.

[Macartney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite simply the most beautiful and romantic story I've ever read, homosexual or non. And sexy as all hell as well. I wanted to crawl inside of it and never leave. The dense, luscious, and entirely earnest prose has echoes of Baldwin and Burroughs. The journey this book will take you on is otherworldly, spiritual and downright revolutionary. It made me pregnant with its spirit baby, and I could not be happier. Without an ounce of hyperbole, it is a book for the ages.

[Phyllis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an incredible book. I was amused and charmed. And then I would
realize that within the same page, a piece of my heart would break off. Trebor Healey's writing has been called poetic, and I think that's a good description. I highly recommend A Horse Named Sorrow.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written, tragic and heroic, this tale is set in the early 1990s of foggy, scary, amazing San Francisco, when you could share an apartment for a few hundred dollars a month, but your neighbor might die before you got to know him.

Shamus, aka Shame, is immediately attracted to Jimmy, whose string-adorned bicycle becomes his intro while the two meet on a BART station platform. Their romantic and erotic connection, shortened by Jimmy's death (It's mentioned up front, so that's no spoiler), is told in two timelines; their romance up to Shame's departure from San Francisco, and Shame's cross-country journey with Jimmy's ashes, on Jimmy's bike, to retrace his trek, "backasswards." He meets Eugene, a mute, gorgeous young Native American man, who helps uncork Shame's bottled up refusal to allow another love/lust into his life.

With open and brazenly poetic homages to Jack Kerouac, Healey manages to tell a more coherent tale than his inspiration, while occasionally digging into a lush, hallucinatory epiphany or two. What a journey! Pancakes for everyone!

[Kris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked this book for a variety of reasons...the locations, the characters, the premise. The ending was suspenseful and left me on edge. This is a book to warm your heart and open your mind. A real ride.

[Antonella · Rating 5 out of 5]

At times poetic, at times gritty, it’s a great love story beginning in San Francisco in the early Nineties at the height of the AIDS epidemic. Two arcs are beautifully interwoven: Shame and Jimmy brief love story and Shame’s travel through the US with Jimmy's ashes tied to the handlebars of his bike to fulfill a promise made to his lover. A fair share of symbolism, great writing, not even depressing, although I did cry now and then. But I cry sometimes when I discover the story of another person died of AIDS, a person I admired or just a person whose story I stumbled upon. I can’t imagine how it was to live then, especially as a gay man, and to see your friends die alongside the culpable inactivity of the government. Warmly recommended.

[Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reminded me of another SF queer novel, Ali Liebegott's The IHop Papers, and the reference in the text to Tom Spanbauer's work made it make sense even more. A sweet and sad story. The alternating timeline POV (one chapter in the past, one in the present) was pretty rigid and ultimately created a lot of boring repetition. Jimmy, the doomed lover, also could have been better developed as a character. All that said, the depiction of Seamus' intense grief following Jimmy's death was well done and perfectly captured the absurdity of a 22 year old widow. There was also a general queer sensibility to the whole thing that I related to.

[Scintilla · Rating 3 out of 5]

Extreme purple prose

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this novel brutally personal. Not a quick read with it's lyrical and image laden prose. Trebor Healey is a gifted writer.

[Suman Bista]

good

[A M-F · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oncredible.

[Leon Acord · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a beautiful novel. So perfectly captures the feeling of gay life in San Francisco in the 1980s -- hopeful & terrifying & beautiful & horrific & romantic.
I can't recommend this book enough!

[Indie Reviews · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was first introduced to Trebor Healey’s writing through his politically charged and brilliantly eloquent short story “Trunk,” featured in the 2009 Cleis Press anthology Fool For Love: New Gay Fiction . In 2012, Mr. Healey released A Horse Named Sorrow, an exquisitely written and heart-rending story of twenty-one year-old Seamus Blake who meets and falls in love with Jimmy, but their time together is short-lived because Jimmy dies of AIDS-related illness.

Part Odyssey, part pilgrimage, the story chronicles Seamus' journey on bicycle from San Francisco to Buffalo, to bring Jimmy's ashes home, with glimpses into their short time together through the non-linear unfolding of the story.

The writing is pure poetry set in narrative form and the imagery, which is wrapped in Native American histories, teachings and spirituality, as well as Christian symbolism, is absolutely stunning. The character of Seamus is at once both inspirational and tragic as he pulls – at first to love and care for Jimmy as best he can with moments of hidden hope at somehow preventing the inevitable, and then through his promise to take Jimmy back the way he came, which becomes a search for salvation from his grief and purpose for his existence.

I absolutely loved this novel. It is without question the most beautiful story I read in 2013, but it is also the saddest, and I savoured each and every word.

The complete review of A Horse Named Sorrow by Trebor Healey is available at Indie Reviews.

[Changeling72 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked it. I have to admit I wasn't as engaged as I was with Faun or Through It Came Bright Colors, but I was engaged. I won't go into spoilers, but it concerns a young guy from San Francisco returning his partner's ashes to the latter's home town, cycling across the US! Healey's portrayal of life in San Francisco during the early 90s brought it home to me how sheltered I was from the whole 80s/90s AIDS epidemic. I guess one of the advantages/disadvantages of coming out so late meant that I wasn't exposed to the grim reality, bar Maggie's monolith advertising campaigns, nor the decline and death of any friends. I found Seamus' relationship with Eugene to be particularly touching - perhaps more so than his fateful and short-lived relationship with Jimmy. The ending felt a little bit abrupt, but beautifully written. Jimmy's ultimate fate a metaphor, methough. I guess Seamus' emotional journey can only end in death - and his immediate physical journey had to end somewhere.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

I knew I had to read this book, because of the time and place it is set and my acquaintance with the author way back when (around the time of the book, more or less), but it was hearing the author read that sent me scurrying to the cash register to buy the book immediately. Then I tried to read it slowly, so I could savor the experience, but of course it was too compelling (and charming) and I had to read it all in a rush. Maybe I will just start over and read it again, I think it will reward repeated readings. And lucky for me, Trebor has another new book out, so there is more good reading ahead!

[Mark Harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

The landscape of contemporary gay male fiction is a barren wasteland punctuated on occasion by works of great imagination and beauty. A Horse Named Sorrow by Trebor Healy is one such gem. Rich in symbolism and narrative imagery A Horse Named Sorrow is remiscent of the works of one of the masters of this field, Tom Spanbauer. Trebor writes poignantly of the time in the AIDS crisis before anti-retrovirals were available to stave off impending death. Even with this, A Horse Named Sorrow is not a sad book. It is, rather, a testament to the human spirit's ability to move forward, even as ashes tied to the handlebars of a bike. An excellent read. Buy it now.

[KC · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful and sad story. I really enjoyed this book, it was well written, beautifully told and conveyed a period in recent history in a more tender way than I recall having read before. The story starts in San Francisco during the worst of the AIDS crisis when many were dying on a regular basis, but it takes a turn when the main character heads out on a bike journey to deal with the pain of mourning. It isn't a happy tale, but I found it rather uplifting in the way the main character grows into his journey.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was simply amazing! I truly enjoyed the story of Seamus and Jimmy and the various other characters who come in and out of their lives. It is a book about love, life, death, and discovering who you are. I love the connection to the spirituality of the American Indian. The visuals that are painted by the author are incredible and make you feel like you've been there before, even if you haven't. Can't recommend this title enough!

[willowdog]

In San Francisco at the height of the AIDS crisis, Seamus falls in love with Jimmy who is positive and has arrived from Buffalo after a cross-country bike ride. Upon Jimmy's death, he promises to take him back from where he came and embarks on a journey by bike through the West. Very poetic and wonderfully written.

[Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most beautiful and haunting odes to a doomed relationship I've ever read. Reminded me of Kerouac's On The Road except far more poignant and relevant to today's context. we should all embark on such a journey to better understand humanity and the world we live in.

[Shawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautifully written in parts, and certainly a touching story from the depths of the AIDS crisis, but too repetitive and with a sudden and unsatisfying conclusion.

[Bill Armstrong · Rating 2 out of 5]

Boring and repetitive. I quit reading it.

[Marc · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's quite a journey - it gets better all the way. The ending could be trite in the hands of a less skilled writer but Trebor Healey succeeds. A lovely story of loss and longing.

[Bri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful and poetic. The narrator has a compelling voice that quickly forces the reader to get invested.

[Hal · Rating 5 out of 5]

An original first half followed by a Spanbauer-esque second half, nevertheless Very Good