Aristotle & Dante... - Remember the Rain & All Secrets of the Universe

[Adira]

Here we will be discussions sections five and six of Aristotle & Dante Discover the Universe, Remember the Rain & All Secrets of the Universe. Please make sure you use the (view spoiler)[... (hide spoiler)] to hide any plot twist or concerns.

[Louise]

I really enjoyed this book! I felt that all the themes were handled really sensitively, the characters were well developed and Ari's development was well paced and completely believable.

[Adira]

Louise wrote: "I really enjoyed this book! I felt that all the themes were handled really sensitively, the characters were well developed and Ari's development was well paced and completely believable."

Agreed! The pacing for this book was really well written and the characters were ones that I really felt for. My only issue came at the end.

(view spoiler)[ For me, I felt as if Ari's ending realization that he was gay wasn't true to character. To me, Ari's frustration throughout the book seemed to be fixed on the fact that his family never talked about anything especially not his brother or his father's sojourn in Vietnam. Therefore, I thought the perfect ending for the book would've been around the chapters where Ari's family has the sit down to talk about Bernardo. Even though I did love the fact that Ari was a character that was caught up in such emotional turmoil, I didn't think those feelings got resolved correctly in the ending. It almost seemed like Alire Saenz could have achieved the same tension at the end of the book without rerouting his character's feelings for his best friend. (hide spoiler)]

[Marion]

Overall, I liked the book, even though the constant repetition of lines became a bit annoying to me (I mean characters repeating each other sentences).

My main "concern" with the book is this: (view spoiler)[Why did Ari have to be in love with Dante? It still makes for a super cute thing, but I don't see why Ari couldn't love Dante as a friend and still be super protective of him, etc. It is clear that they have a special bond, and yes, Dante is quickly introduced as "wanting to kiss boys", with which I have no problem, it was actually refreshing to read something that felt genuine and honest about a boy's feelings over his sexuality. But throughout the book, Ari's struggle isn't with his sexuality or feelings towards Dante, it is because of his family, his brother and his relationship to them. Making him be in love with Dante didn't seem to resolve any of the major things he was going through. And why can't a straight boy be a gay boy's best friend? That's a thing in the world! (hide spoiler)].

I agree with what Adira said.

[Adira]

Marion wrote: "Overall, I liked the book, even though the constant repetition of lines became a bit annoying to me (I mean characters repeating each other sentences).

My main "concern" with the book is this: [sp..."

Ah! So true! I was all sold on the ending up until the last pages. I loved Ari's family dynamic as Alire Saenz wrote it. Up til the last pages I really though the author's writing style was honest and true to form of two teenage boys coming of age. (view spoiler)[One thing I was wonder though is did you get weirded out by the sponge bath scene? I couldn't figure out what mother of a teenage boy would allow another boy to bathe their child at that age. (hide spoiler)]

[Kristel]

This was my attempt to address Marion's comments, but it ended up being very, circuitous and not really an answer at all. This is just my attempt to suss out why I thought the ending felt effective.

(view spoiler)[For me, the underlying theme of the novel is the way that Ari struggles with visions of masculinity. His life in the beginning was "haunted" by two male figures. There's his father, who ostensibly has masculine attributes because he fought in the war, but was rendered traumatized that he ended up being almost timid and emotionally absent for Ari--he was absent when he went to Vietnam but never became fully present even when he went home. Then there's his brother, who is more of an obvious absence, and whose desire to assert his masculinity is so dire that he killed a person because of it. So we see Ari oscillating between feeling shut down and feeling overwhelming rage as manifestations of what a man like him should act.

I don't quite believe what Dante's mother said that he was in love with Dante since at least the car accident, but I do think that the attraction was there. It just gets automatically shut down by Ari's (then) rigid ideas of masculinity. That's why he went through the motions of dating a girl in school, etc.

But Dante (and to some extent Dante's family) challenges for him the vision of traditional machismo, which is why he felt both enamored and resistant to it. Part of him is fascinated because they're relatively wealthier and more educated, yes, but they also seem more at ease with themselves in ways that Ari and his family doesn't. I think it would've been easier to extricate himself from Dante's life than actually stay there--they don't even go to school together and he has to go to an entirely different part of town to hang out, and there was this moving away thing--but there's always something about Dante that he wants to solve, so to speak.

So because that was the theme that I got from the story, I thought the final plot progression came upon naturally. That he had several mental roadblocks between him and entertaining the idea of falling in love with a boy. And I don't think there is an equivalency here with stories about heterosexual friendships turning non-platonic. Popular culture and literature is lousy with storylines about gay men pining for their straight friends, where this feeling is never returned. LGBT storylines like this, that don't reinforce the norm of the way gay men meet each other and connect, is rarer. (hide spoiler)]

[Louise]

Kristel, I really connected with your interpretation of the themes and the ending. It was never a particularly overt theme, like it was when we read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao for example, but I felt it simmering through the book all the same.

How did you guys feel about the setting of this novel? It's set in the late 80's, but personally I didn't get any sense of place from the writing.

[Elizabeth]

Kristel I also like what you said about the theme of masculinity, as well as this being a nice example of two boys who fall in love with each other as opposed to one pining over the other.

I thought this book was very sweet, and I understand why so many people really love it. I also really liked the dynamic between Ari and his parents and enjoyed reading about them becoming closer as a family. However, one of the things that didn't work so well for me was (view spoiler)[ at the end of the book when his parents sat him down and basically told him that he was gay. I thought a big part of the book was Ari figuring out his sexuality, so it seemed strange that he finally came to terms with it by his parents just telling him who he was. It was also weird because Ari was always talking about how he didn't like how his parents were always deciding things for him. I mean in this case they weren't really deciding it for him because he was gay, but it felt off to me. Did anyone else feel this way? (hide spoiler)]

As for the setting of the novel, I think it could have taken place in the present day. There wasn't too much tying it to the 1980s except for the occasional mention of La Bamba. I liked that it took place in El Paso because I loved the visual of them driving out to the desert and looking at the stars.

[Mochajunkie]

I agree with all of the criticisms above. The book didn't have to end the way it did. But it was ok that it did. I enjoyed it so much. I really liked seeing the world through a teenage boy.

I mentioned in the other discussion section, that even the side story of Ileana said a lot. Her presence, lack of commitment and then her disappearance. I think I wanted more reaction from Ari. He's living in the 'ecotone' between childhood and adulthood, and she moved from one to the other suddenly and disappeared.

I'm so glad I read this book.