Giovanni's Room

Interesting, but perhaps I was expecting a little more.

This was a book club choice. I had not read any Baldwin since my 20's. I found the story of a young man in Paris coming to grips with his homosexuality in the 50's very timely. Although times have changed and there is more acceptance, we still fine many heterosexual men in marriages because they are conflicted about their feelings. The book presented many stock characters but it did reflect the times. I am glad that I read it but not sure I would strongly recommend it. I have read many other books about the subject that are more up to date and probably gives a better view of the difficulty of coming to terms with ones sexuality..

Giovanni’s Room is James Baldwin’s 1956 classic tragedy about a man struggling with his sexuality. David, a twenty-something American living in Paris, has asked his girlfriend, Hella, to marry him. While Hella is traveling in Spain, considering his proposal, he meets Giovanni. They fall in love and live for a time in Giovanni’s room on the outskirts of Paris. David tries but fails to reconcile his feelings for Giovanni with his own (and society’s) expectation of masculinity. Giovanni truly loves David, but as much as David desires to be loved, he resists it coming from a same-sex relationship.

“People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception. Their decisions are not really decisions at all—a real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things than can be named—but elaborate systems of evasion, of illusion, designed to make themselves and the world appear to be what they and the world are not… I had decided to allow no room in the universe for something which shamed and frightened me.”

This book is mostly character driven. The plot is provided by the mystery of how Giovanni has ended up accused of murder (which we find out at the beginning). It is narrated in first person by David, so the reader is privy to his inner turmoil and guilt. Baldwin’s writing is masterful. Many passages are simply stunning. As a caution, characters make remarks in this book that express misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia. It is a tragedy, so the tone is sad, bordering on depressing. It is almost like watching the proverbial train wreck, knowing something bad will happen but not being able to look away. Fortunately, it is short, so the agony is not too drawn out. Recommended to readers of literary fiction or 20th Century classics.

2.5

Set in 1950s Paris, the novel follows David, an American man grappling with his feelings for Giovanni, an Italian bartender. David has to navigate societal expectations and his own desires on his journey to self acceptance.

But David cannot acknowledge and accept his sexuality and thus he breaks many hearts with his heartlessness.

He was a very unlikeable character.

Whilst the writing was fantastic, there was a lot of transphobia and misogyny in this.

His whole spiel about how men can’t be housewives and he’s not going to be a little girl just to be with a man was unpleasant.

“I stand at the window of this great house in the south of France as night falls, the night which is leading me to the most terrible morning of my life.”

I’ve been hesitant to review this book since I finished it a couple weeks ago partially because I’ve been of two minds about it. On the one hand, I found Baldwin’s wording brilliant. The intentionality of his word choice, the weight of his sentence structures, the artistry of his descriptions - all were truly beautiful. But on the other hand, all the beautiful wording in the world could not salvage a plot that felt too shallow to truly capture my interest.

I spent most of the book just tolerating each plot point while waiting for the reveal of why Giovanni’s fate had been sealed. The only aspects of the plot that interested me more than the mystery around Giovanni’s fate were the scenes leading up to the crime but they came too late in the book to save the plot.

Perhaps, I would have appreciated other aspects of the plot if I had connected with the main character in any way, but I found him to be frustrating and uninteresting at best, selfish and despicable at worst. I spent much of the book trying to figure out why I should care about him and this feeling became more pronounced the more I learned about Giovanni and even Hella who seemed like much more interesting and sympathetic characters.

Above all, I think I struggled most with the reality that this novel wasn’t written for me. A reality that bothered me more than it usually would because Go Tell it on the Mountain felt so directly written for me. It felt almost like a step backward to have to sit through this more blatantly queer work that was written from the perspective of a community of men whose lives and principles and reactions to their fears and identity were so far removed from my queer experiences and so absent of ideas from which I felt I could learn.

Still, the wording was so beautiful, so truly remarkable that I loved it even though I could not love the other parts of the book, and that’s why I’ve rated it slightly above average. That and the recognition that I might have been able to tolerate the plot a little more had I read the book in a less piecemeal way or not already read his first novel and loved it so.

Giovanni’s Room, with its all white cast and gay subject matter, was a declaration of freedom by Baldwin. A brave refusal, following the success of Go Tell It on the Mountain, to remain in the file labelled ‘Black Writing’. Not everyone got the message, of course. His agent helpfully advised him to burn the manuscript.

Freedom, or the choice between authentic and inauthentic existence, is ultimately what the book is about. David plumps for the latter option with disastrous consequences for himself and everyone in his orbit.

A concise and elegantly written guide to how not to live your life.

So sad and surprisingly human and modern. I think this might be my first fiction from Baldwin, so I wasn't expecting this and was very pleasantly surprised. If only sexuality and masculinity were taught to more men with the emotional intelligence required to handle them.

A masterpiece,very smart and moving. A very great book.

My book group members surprised me. Lots of critical comments about Baldwin, and this book in particular. Some people found David selfish and off-putting, some found the prose occasionally 'purple'. I agree that David's life is still undefined at the end, and that he still cannot fully accept the kind of man he is, but isn't that true for many of us? All agreed the writing was wonderful, the sense of place, Paris in the corners of the city palpable. But it wasn't the rave I expected. Am I naive? Not sure.

This tale, set in Paris, tells a sad story of an American man whose girlfriend is traveling on vacation in Spain. He meets an Italian bartender Giovanni and falls in love. At the time, such love is illegal in America, and while not illegal in France, it is culturally shunned. Renowned author James Baldwin captures what such social oppression can do to an innocent, loving relationship in that era. It ostensibly details a romantic tragedy while implicitly it begs for better social conditions for homosexuals.

Recent decades have witnessed a change in social attitudes about homosexuality. Indeed, I have witnessed a change in my own attitudes about homosexuality. While much work remains to be done, we, in the west, at least, have become more accepting and understanding of the unique dilemmas such love poses. And we have widened and deepened by seeing that such love is a universal human love. Yes, love is love is love.

Baldwin’s telling brings us back to a different era. Written and set in the 1950s, Baldwin documents an all-too-typical plot line. All too frequently in that time, love becomes impossible, self-love becomes impossible, and conforming to society becomes impossible. Baldwin shows us the consequences and cost in lost human life. In this story, Giovanni’s room, once a haven for love, becomes a reason for haunting, not just for two human lives but for everyone impacted by the relationship. In eloquent terms, it reminds us that we all bear tragic consequences when we don’t prioritize love first.

I’m a cisgender, heterosexual white male in America. In other words, I have a lot of privilege. Reading this story helped bring the inner lives of various friends to life. Without having to delve into a painful, personal dialogue, it told me of some of the cost they have born just for being themselves. In a democracy where a homophobic backlash is only a charismatic politician away, moving books like Baldwin’s can help us remember why we’ve taken the steps we have and why we must never go back.

David is desperately trying to find himself in the years following the Second World War. As a young American man who is confused about so many things—his professional future, a strained relationship with his father, his sexual orientation—he has escaped to Paris where he meets Hella, another ex-pat from the United States. David proposes to Hella despite not really loving her; she responds by leaving for Spain to think things over. In her absence, David makes the acquaintance of Giovanni, a young Italian man working in a prominent gay bar. The two men strike up a friendship and, soon enough, they become lovers, although David’s confusion over his identity prevents him from fully committing to the relationship. As he has no other financial means, David moves into Giovanni’s small one-room apartment, where he allows himself to explore his true feelings and attitudes for the first time. However, when Hella returns from Spain to accept his marriage proposal, David leaves Giovanni in a cruel and heartbreaking way, which sets the latter on a destructive path that ultimately leads him to commit a tragic act. The story ends with David being a lot sadder but not any wiser, while Giovanni awaits his final fate.

In Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin has crafted a taut, masterful examination of the myriad pitfalls that befall someone on their journey to personal enlightenment. The author was justly celebrated for developing themes of race, class, and sexual orientation in his writing and this book stands out for its focus on the dilemmas and introspections of an all-white cast of characters. That becomes a powerful stylistic choice that allows the story to concentrate on David’s struggle to come to grips with his own definition of masculinity and the shame that drives his daily behaviors without conflating those subjects with issues of racial identity. In a novel written about seven decades ago, I can only imagine that these were extremely controversial topics that were neither vogue nor comfortable to confront. The tale is told from David’s first-person perspective, in both flashbacks and the present tense, which is frequently the choice of a writer who wants to present the reader with an unreliable narrator. And, to be sure, David is a very unreliable narrator, if only because he knows—or is willing to accept—so little about himself. The gritty realism and melancholy tone of Giovanni’s Room make it a difficult novel to read at times, but it is rightly considered a classic and one that has definitely stood the test of time.

Although I felt deeply for David at the end, I had a very hard time getting through this book. Giovanni's self-destructive behavior was hard for me to accept; I kept wanted him to just get it together and make some healthy choices. Not too sympathetic of me, I know.

Giovanni's Room tells the story of David, an American of little means living in 1950s Paris in an attempt to leave behind his past and find himself. While his girlfriend, Hella, is travelling around Spain contemplating his marriage proposal, David meets and starts a relationship with Giovanni, an Italian bartender also of little means but who manages to have a job and a room for them both to live. The relationship is not easy however as David is constantly battling self loathing, his sexuality and what it means to be a man. David tells us of previous encounters with a childhood friend, Joey, who after they spend the night together David distanced himself from and bullied relentlessly. It is only within the confines of Giovanni's Room - a dark and claustrophobic space - that David allows himself to explore parts of his personality that he utterly detests.

When Hella returns from Spain, David abandons Giovanni in order to start his 'real' life with her, an act that leads to heart breaking consequences for all involved.

First published in the 50s I can see how this work caused a sensation for how complexly and empathetically it presents homosexuality. Even reading it now I feel an empathy to David and the emotions he is struggling with. While some of the language and attitudes to gay men feel outdated they are presented as David's opinion rather than facts making it work in the narrative. There were also misogynistic elements that jarred for me - particularly in relation to David’s relationship with Hella and her own theories on why women need men - but worked for the narrative.

This is the first of Baldwin's works that I’ve read, and as his second novel I wondered why the renowned African-American writer took on a story with a completely white cast. Some have noted Baldwin with this novel replaces blackness with gayness and makes an interesting commentary on masculinity to boot.

I read this as part of my personal challenge to read vintage queer works by authors of note and it is definitely an interesting read with an important place in black and queer literature.

I am a bit embarrassed to say that I checked this audiobook out of the library for Valentine's Day, knowing only that the book was one the Guardian's list of 1000 novels under the category of love and that the few other books by Baldwin I have read were impressive. So, as probably most people here on GR would have known, not a great choice for Valentine's day but wow, what a powerful book!

I found it interesting that there was no mention of David's race - I had assumed that race would have been a theme (or at least a minor aspect) of the novel. Instead Baldwin has given the reader a man growing up in NY in the 30s & 40s whose feelings of alienation are rooted in his sexuality rather than race. The only other comparable depiction of self-loathing I have read was in Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye".

Considering this is a homosexual love story written in the 50s it doesn't seem dated. A tragic love story.

This was incredible. Baldwin conveys so much about humanity, shame, pain, love, and hatred in this story. The writing is open, honest, raw, and so very human. I am in awe. Definitely a new favorite.

Really great.

I won't start by talking much about the writing. It is James Baldwin. As always his prose is perfect. Somehow a single sentence can include desolation and hope, resignation and strength, and it does all that with economy and poetry. The perfection of the prose allowed me to focus fully on the story being told. I also won't start by telling you this is a good book. Of course its a good book. Instead I want to talk about the reading experience, because in addition to being a great novel, this is a historical document, and it gave me a good deal to reflect on.

I wondered throughout how different a read this would have been in 1956 or 1986, or 2006 for that matter. In earlier times the beauty, earthiness, and simplicity of David and Giovanni's love would have been a revelation and I am sure to many a much needed validation. That was certainly true in 1986 when the public perception of sexual relationships between men was limited to the transactional sex of the bathhouses that were the focus of AIDs news coverage and the bars as depicted in Cruising. I am no historian, but I see Giovanni's Room as the beginning of a subgenre of film and literature that depicts same gender relationships which include love, connection and tenderness and are somehow therefore doomed to crushing loss and pain. I think about Midnight Cowboy, Brokeback Mountain, even Philadelphia (in which love was depicted as tragic and also very non-carnal.) And I get it. The world made a stable joyful long-term relationship between men an awfully difficult, maybe impossible, goal. And also, it was not just straight people watching and reading these tales. I imagine boys realizing same-sex attraction most often did not even think to work for deeper relationships because it was not presented as a possibility. I am not intending to straight-splain or infer that long-term committed partnerships are the be-all-and-end-all. I mention all this because I have a point here that required some foundation. Art is in the viewers perception not the artist's intention. This is not timeless, and this is a very different book now than it was when written. I assume this story was revolutionary at its time in treating love between two men as something beautiful, if doomed. For me, here in 2022 though a good deal of what I see is not the liberation but the shame and self-loathing. There are constant biting asides talking about the loathsomeness of "fairies", how appalling it was to see a man behave in an "effeminate" way. There are also constant reminders that the "good" gay men also desired women. Giovanni and David both stress how much they enjoy(ed) sex with women. It is only the old queens, depicted as predators looking to seduce straight young boys with cash and prizes who only like boys.

Even the characters' physical surroundings and daily activities convey the message "homosexual=less than." Giovanni and David roll around in bed all day, accomplish nothing but drinking cognac and fucking in a decaying shell of a servant's room, barely within city limits, with peeling wallpaper and dirty sheets and pungent bodies. David and Hella, on the other hand, lie together in clean sheets, scrubbed sweet-smelling underclothing hanging from the bathroom rail. They pop out to take day trips around France or to stroll - always on the Right Bank bien sur. I understand that at the time pride was not something LGBTQ+ people could get to, what with the day to day burden of surviving and staying out of jail. That knowledge does not remove the sting of recognizing that what Giovanni and David had was considered a dream, that this was a comparatively positive look at life for gay men, that this limited and necessarily tragic existence was aspirational.

The world is now a very different place and when reading this now ione sees some warts. The book remains beautiful and revolutionary it a way, and now it is a reminder of just how recently so many of the people around us were denied the opportunity to even try to have a simple, mundane life of contentment and how many people suffered as a result (David's father and Hella were both caught in the crossfire, and suffered a great deal.) Also worth mentioning, the discussion of trans women and women in general is appalling. Hella lamenting her interest in the world and begging to just be controlled by a man made me shudder. Giovanni laughing about how women need to be beaten was even worse. Audre Lorde called out Baldwin on being hateful to women and she was so right. (For a snippet of that google James Baldwin and Audre Lorde and you will find a widely available conversation between then that was published in Ebony I think or maybe it was Jett? It is short and worth the read for sure. GR won't let me link.)

So at the end of this non-review where I think out my feelings in front of everyone who cares to watch, I heartily recommend that everyone read this book. It is a 4.5 rather than a 5 because the final 20ish pages were a bit ridiculously melodramatic IMO, for the misogyny when Baldwin knew better, and because there are a couple other books by Baldwin I thought were a whole lot better, and I felt the need to distinguish that -- had this book been written by a less accomplished writer than Baldwin perhaps I would have notched up to a 5. Vive la Baldwin.

[Giovanni's Room] by [[James Baldwin]]

James Baldwin is a masterful writer. There is something about the way he understands and uses the English language that I find impressive but not pretentious. [Giovanni's Room] is a short novel about a young American man who is living in Paris and experimenting with love. David is engaged to a woman named Hella, but while she is traveling, he takes up with a young man named Giovanni and they develop a passionate relationship. As David attempts to untangle his feelings, lives around him fall apart.

This is a short novel that packs a huge punch. The events are dramatic, and David's actions and indecision set into motion a string of events that he doesn't intend. I'm looking forward to continuing to read more by Baldwin.

What do you do when you want something so badly it scares you half to death? And when you don't understand why you want it in the first place?

David is an American who has run off to Europe to explore and learn new things. (Though some might say he's running from what his life would be if he stayed in the states.) While on his travels, he's met Hella, a woman from Minnesota, and he expects he'll marry her someday. That's what he should do.

But while Hella is off exploring in Spain, David does some exploring of his own. He meets Giovanni, a young bartender, one evening and the two hit it off. Before long, David moves in with Giovanni, sharing the small room he's renting, and what the two of them have goes well beyond friendship.

For David, this all feels so right but so incredibly wrong at the same time. He cares dearly for Giovanni, but the thought of being with him forever is frightening. And there's still Hella. Hella feels safe for David. And she will be coming back someday.

David will need to make a choice, and he knows what the easy decision would be. But it's all complicated by the fact that Giovanni has fallen in love with him. And David just might be too frightened to admit that he loves Giovanni back. If he abandons Giovanni, he knows his world will fall apart, but what's his responsibility to this other man anyway? He can live with the guilt, right?

---

The 1950s were certainly not an easy time to be gay. But that's true for much of history. And the struggles that some men went through, trying to reconcile who they were with society's expectations, were certainly heart wrenching. And we get a good glimpse of that here.

When reading this, it's easy to think of it as historical fiction. But that diminishes the significance of James Baldwin writing this contemporary to the time it takes place. In that regard, it's a truly groundbreaking work, although it's not exactly the most uplifting piece of literature.

I definitely give this one a recommendation, though I need to put a caveat that it's not a happiness and sunshine story. It's gritty. And it will definitely make you think.

A novel of its time, but I liked it. I don't know what it is about tragedies and passions that fascinate me xD. (Translated from Spanish)

"We embraced. It was like holding in my hand a rare bird, exhausted and almost doomed that I had miraculously found. I was very scared, sure that he was scared too, and we closed our eyes." Second novel by James Baldwin. I could say that the central theme is homosexuality, but I believe it goes beyond that. It touches on themes such as acceptance, loneliness, the impossibility of surrender, of love, both personal and external prejudices, and it does so in a wild, excessive way, as only Baldwin knows how. David is a foreigner in Paris in the '50s. His girlfriend Hella goes to Spain for a few days. In the solitude of Paris, one night he meets Giovanni, a bartender in a shabby dive, and the attraction is instant. David had already had an experience with a schoolmate, which he tried in every way to erase from his mind. No matter how hard he tries, he cannot detach himself from Giovanni; he promises that it will only be for a few days, until Hella returns, and then he will go back to his girlfriend and nothing will have happened here. But the passion that ignites between them makes separation impossible. He moves into his room and they begin to live together. Giovanni is completely infatuated with David, although David talks to him about Hella and his intention to return to her. Once she comes back, tragedy unfolds. David constantly grapples with what he is and what he should be. He cannot accept being in love with Giovanni and does everything possible to distance himself. It’s interesting how he portrays his characters; here everyone is a victim, everyone loses. There are other characters, notably Jacques and Guillaume, two gay men who have missed their time and beg for love all the time, taking advantage of the needs of the younger, broke ones, pathetic in their actions; in the end one understands that they are two poor lonely souls in search of love. Hella is also another victim, in love with David, unable to understand what is happening to her. In short, a story about broken hearts skillfully drawn by this immense author. (Translated from Spanish)

I read somewhere that the three great icons of LGBT literature were Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman, and James Baldwin. Whitman aside (I don’t read poetry even if I’m dead), I had yet to discover Baldwin and... I loved it (?). This book is beautiful in its form. The author writes beautiful and delicate words with a fascinating air of sophistication. One could be misled by that cover (honestly ?, a naked guy lying on his back on a chair?! Really?! ?) and think it’s going to be a barrage of explicit sex, when in reality Baldwin is extremely clean, careful, and very, very subtle.
I am a regular reader of this subgenre although mostly I have read young adult LGBT literature. And reading "Giovanni's Room," I find a chasm that separates Baldwin from more contemporary books. This man writes from the pain, decay, humiliation, and despair of an era when being homosexual was an inexorable condemnation (?). The narrative is immensely sad. It wanders melancholically among men who cannot love freely, who cannot have a long-term partner, who must hide, pretend, face loneliness, self-loathing, disgust, and shame. "Giovanni's Room" is the heartfelt ode of a man who does not accept himself, who tries to be "normal," who seeks women, desperately pursuing comfortable and socially accepted love, who denies, hides, and runs away from himself... until he meets Giovanni.
A beautiful book, although very painful for those of us who empathize with the suffering of the LGBT community. I am a mother. I do not know what my kids will choose. It doesn’t really matter, but I wouldn’t want them to go through what the men in this book feel and suffer. I want them to love themselves and I want others to accept them, and if possible, to love them too. And above all, I wish for them to know that a choice cannot define them and that they are undeniably beautiful no matter who they sleep with. (Translated from Spanish)

„It became, in a way, every room I had ever been in and every room I find myself hereafter will remind me of Giovanni’s room.” (Quotation page 76)

Content
David’s mother dies when he is only five years old and he grows up with his father and his aunt Ellen, the unmarried sister of his father. As soon as possible, he leaves and lives on his own. When he feels weary of every part of his life in New York, he moves to Paris, where he meets Hella. When he asks her to marry him, she leaves him, travels to Spain to think about her future. David stays in Paris. One evening he meets the bartender Giovanni, and from the first moment, there is a deep attraction between them. Giovanni lives in a small one-room-apartment and David moves in the same evening. When Hella comes back, David leaves Giovanni on that same day, pretending that this love affair never has happened.

Theme and genre
This novel, written 1956, is about living between truth and lies, bisexuality, love, lost innocence, shame and guilt. An important topic for Baldwin’s persons is their search for their sexual identity and the related insecurity.

Characters
David, the young American, hides his feelings for men and feels sure about Hella, wants to marry, settle down and have children. His life is a perfect vision, created for the others, but a vision, he desperately tries to believe to be true. He knows that Hella will probably come back.
Giovanni is Italian, emotional and lives his feelings. That David, whom he trusts and loves, just leaves without a word destroys him.

Plot and writing
David, the first person narrator tells the story during one night, and thinking about the next day, just in the present time. The first pages contain the whole story, revealing the major points, themes and conflict. Doing so, the author is free of any timeline and suspense level. The story moves between memories and significant events in David’s childhood, teenage years, and his years in Paris, and the hours of the present night and morning. A central point of the story is Guilleaume’s bar, a place for bohemians living their sexual diversity. Baldwin uses the scenes to describe a different live, working or without work at daytime, but waiting for the evenings and living during the night. He shows a very special picture of early Parisian mornings and the locations still open or just opening, for example the famous Les Halles.

Conclusion
Not always highly acclaimed by literary critics, this novel for a long time now is a timeless classic. Written with empathy and sensivity, in a poetic narrative language, the story gives many questions to reflect on them, about human life, decisions, possible guilt and fate.

A novel for those who have never read Baldwin. It's good to know something about the history of it to increase its value. Black in the 1950s, there it is. An unmissable novel. (Translated from Spanish)

A fantastic exploration of how we choose society's expectations over our own, even in the face of happiness.

In the 1950s, a young, blonde New Yorker goes to Paris because, in his words “perhaps, as we say in America, I wanted to find myself.” However, his belief that he could control his behavior and destiny is in conflict with his basic (if submerged) desires. Under the circumstances, going to Paris favored the influence and ultimate victory of the latter, as he himself expected at the bottom of his heart. He makes efforts to avoid and then to escape from the consequences of his desires, and in the process other individuals become collateral damage. He narrates his story from a house in the south of France, but at the end he is returning to Paris without any indication of returning to the United States. He has accepted a gay identity permanently.

This beautifully written book has a strong plot, penetrating insights into psychology and life’s mysteries and interesting perspectives on cultural differences between Americans and Europeans. In terms of location, an unnamed and perhaps fictitious gay bar located on or near Rue Bonaparte on the Left Bank takes lead position. Montparnasse (Closerie des Lilas and the Select) also features. There is a delightful morning excursion for breakfast at a cafe in Les Halles. Giovanni’s single room apartment is located at Nation. The main character visits the American Express a few times to check mail and obtain money transfers from his father.

If you have not already, you owe it to yourself to spend some time in 1950's Paris, in Giovanni's room.

James Baldwin's classic novel is a lyrical book both beautiful and frustrating. Beautiful for its language - the sentences just flow and I found it very hard to put this book down. Frustrating because it's the 1950's and so the love that the narrator David finds in Paris is hopeless, because David is a product of his time - oh so closeted and terribly selfish.

This book is full of small details while it carefully avoids getting too detailed about the heart of the story. Though it gets much closer in its depiction of love between two men (and for that matter love between a man and woman) than I would have thought possible for a book published in 1953, still it dances around it's main topic. David is a careful narrator, who does not want to admit to himself the love that he has found, and he makes a mess of things because of it.

Yes, the times and attitudes were different then, but there is something in this story that seems timeless to me. I hated to come to the end of this one, and I am sorry that I've never picked it up before now. Highly recommend.

It's a book that, personally, I wasn't entirely convinced by... I liked the plot, which is why I started reading, but I felt that it didn't have the conclusion to the story that I was expecting. (Translated from Spanish)

There was a time, in the upper echelons of culture, when everything French was in vogue, and if you didn't add French phrases to your conversations, you were considered almost ignorant.

These groups turned culture into something exclusive, where everything was Frenchified as a fashion statement, with the rooster as their banner.

And in this book, the untranslated phrases are there with this intent, especially since the story takes place in Paris and there is no damn narrative necessity for it.

So, I started off hating the book because of an unjustifiable abuse, but of course... Baldwin doesn't just write well; he is God, and he combines in his prose rawness, reflection, irony, tension without losing musicality, leaving an entire American generation feeling like novices.

Giovanni's Room is considered one of the first LGBTQ novels back in 1956, with an American author who is black and homosexual, come on, everything in its favor!

The title and the novel are a clear symbolism for coming out, not so much to the outside world but to oneself.

David's girlfriend goes on a trip to Spain to take a breather in their relationship, which is nothing new for this atypical couple. On one of his outings to kill the boredom and wait, David, the protagonist of this story, will meet Giovanni in a bar in Paris and will begin a romance as torrid as any other, where the protagonist's moral doubts, guilt, and love will be the Achilles' heels, his confusion, his awakening. Something he tries to justify and reject.

A novel where events are narrated after they happened, and yet it doesn't lose interest; the beginning, which is the end, is a backdrop, a consequence.

I don't know if Baldwin dodged the issue by creating two Caucasian characters or not; viewed from 2023, it doesn't matter at all, but the context in which it came to light was already quite bold to even hint at.

Be that as it may, I find it a sublime text, with delicious prose, and a pang of conscience that will accompany us throughout the journey.

But I can't forgive the many untranslated phrases: this is a snail ?, this a flower ?, and double or nothing on the foie, which we have long incorrectly called pâté.
Overall, I really enjoyed this reading. (Translated from Spanish)