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(More customer reviews)Basically, the story is about 22-year-old Vadriel Vail, wealthy, handsome, beautiful, whose parents and brother died in a boating accident, leaving him in the care of an old business manager. Sheltered from life in an English public school, and preoccupied with his spiritual life, he is actually too beautiful to stay in a monastery he retreats to because he upsets the tranquil balance of the monks. So he is forced to re-enter the world. On the other side, there is Armand de Guise, rich, beautiful, older, far more sophisticated, who feels the world is his to own, including the people in it. He fancies the cute younger brother of one of the Italian call boys he uses, and, when the younger man (Angelo della Fiore) resists him, Armand rapes him. When Armand runs into Vadriel in Newport, however, he begins to change, and over the course of the book his love for Vadriel causes him to become a much better man, devoted to Vadriel, though their relationship is something that is difficult for both of them. Meanwhile, naive Vadriel has also met a beautiful young, headstrong woman named Placide Van Leer, who falls in love with him and they marry. Vadriel does not understand that the friendship he has with the woman, whom he actually loves, is not Love in the passionate sense.
The marriage to Placide, however, is not the only complication standing in the way of the two men, though it is a big one. There is also the world's approbation about two men making love together, far more acute in the early 20th century than in the early 21st, where it is still a strong factor in many places. Also, there is the matter of Armand's rape of the young servant Angelo, which comes back to haunt him in a dramatic moment. Vadriel, too, has to deal with his own strong Catholic convictions, his attention to good and evil and his spirituality, and whether or not succumbing to physically expressing his love for Armand is evil or the true expression of God's love. It takes literally the whole book for the men to come together, and in the final few pages it seems almost too much verbiage. But then it is written like a nineteenth-century romantic novel.
Hey, though the novel moved me and made me hungry for the kind of passions the two heroes feel, it isn't a perfect novel- in many places, like Gaywyck, it is sometimes over-written, with lots of classical allusions and quotations. Armand's conversion seems almost too easy- it is like once he sees Vadriel he decides to completely reform himself and never falters. And the fact that he and Vadriel are another pair of absolutely gorgeous people that are filthy rich and can indulge their every whim (provided their consciences allow it), make it so much more unreal. But that is part of the romantic form, I suppose. There is a lot of symbolism of angels ("Vadriel" is an angel's name, there is a character named "Gabriel" who introduces Vadriel to sex between men and, of course "Angelo della Fiore," which means "Angel of the Flowers". When Armand begins to feel guilt over what he did to Angelo, he comes down with a huge psychosomatic allergy to flowers, which are everywhere in the huge summer homes of the rich in Newport). Another failing of the novel is the cliche that all of main characters in the early 19th century have enlightened, late 20th century attitudes about labor, gay life, women's rights, etc., as if to make them more palatable to the audience who would be reading the book.
I enjoyed the fact that Donough Gaylord and Robert Whyte (who has taken the name of Gaylord in the book as well, since he has discovered he is a cousin of Donough's) are important characters in this book, in the last third, especially "Robbie," who becomes Vadriel's best friend. It is nice to see them a few years down the pike from their novel, and there is a conceit where Donough talks Robert into writing their story, which Robbie says he will do when he is older (that book is penned as a memoir by an older Robert Gaylord).
The arc of the book, really, is that angelic Vadriel comes to terms with his earthly, physical side, and realizes that human, physical love is a manifestation of God, and Armand represents the earthy, base side of human nature. He learns to love on a more spiritual basis and changes his selfish attitude into one of benefices for all humanity when he learns to love Vadriel.
I was extremely moved by the emotional cat and mouse game between Vadriel and Armand and their feelings for each other; I am sorry to have finished the book, but it was getting tiresome near the end. There isn't a lot of sex in this book, but there is a lot of emotional turmoil. The book, though, is written in the Grand Romantic Tradition, and no doubt (as with Gaywyck) through the years I will re-read it several more times.
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