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The Abomination
Cruising the seamy underbelly of London’s gay scene, James Moore Zamora is as eager to repel men as he is to seduce them. Handsome, sophisticated, intelligent, and vain, beneath his immaculately maintained exterior lies an elaborate network of deeply embedded scars from a lifetime filled with betrayal and isolation. Born to negligent, self-absorbed parents and raised among upper crust society on a picturesque Spanish island, at nine-years-old James is sent off to an exclusive Catholic boarding school in England. Met with savageness by his peers, and seduced by the twisted affections of his teachers, he soon develops a self-consciousness that passes for self-awareness and a profound cynicism that masks savage anger. Charged with linguistic precision, brutal honesty, and caustic wit, The Abomination is a disturbing yet electrifying account of one man’s tortured coming of age.
448 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
January 30, 2023
I had a very odd experience with this book - I first garnered a free copy of it over a dozen years ago at a library giveaway of no longer wanted volumes, impelled to take it primarily due to the impish cover photo ... and then it languished in my library unread until now. The first 100 pages took me a torturous three days to get through, as the lapidary, dense prose is often hard to parse, and like many who've proffered reviews here, I considered DNF-ing it. Then, suddenly the clouds parted, and I found the whole thing delicious, racing through the final 333 pages in another three days. Golding is like some unholy amalgamation of Proust, Hollinghurst and St. Aubyn, but still very much his own man ... and this will almost certainly make my year end 'best of' list.
Like many debut novels, the book seems largely autobiographical (the author shares the exact same birthdate as his protagonist, Santiago 'Iago' Moore Zamora/aka James Moore when he gets to the UK). The bulk of the novel provides a Portrait of the Artist as a Young Deviant (the title taken from the stricture in Leviticus warning against man laying with man): first his idyllic childhood on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, with his exotic, beautiful Spanish mother, and his stern, cold fish English father; then his years from 9 to 13 at his pater's dreary Catholic English boarding school, where he shockingly initiates a relationship with his handsome teacher, Mr. Wolfe; and finally his years from 14-18 at the Big School, where he continues as an outsider, and the more reluctant paramour of the obese music maestro Dr. Fox. These are bookended by two brief sections set in the early 90's, when James has become a disillusioned middle aged Londoner, and largely detail his fascination with an older rent boy, with some very graphic, bordering on pornographic, passages.
Golding himself is an enigmatic figure - after much success with this, and a follow-up AIDS-related book in 2004, he seemed to have disappeared, and I feared perhaps he had himself succumbed to the plague. But then I discovered this: https://www.mansionglobal.com/article... .... and it appears he spent 7 years renovating an old palazzo on Malta, and then selling it for $11 million and moving back to London in 2016 - where, hopefully, he has resumed writing.
Like many debut novels, the book seems largely autobiographical (the author shares the exact same birthdate as his protagonist, Santiago 'Iago' Moore Zamora/aka James Moore when he gets to the UK). The bulk of the novel provides a Portrait of the Artist as a Young Deviant (the title taken from the stricture in Leviticus warning against man laying with man): first his idyllic childhood on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, with his exotic, beautiful Spanish mother, and his stern, cold fish English father; then his years from 9 to 13 at his pater's dreary Catholic English boarding school, where he shockingly initiates a relationship with his handsome teacher, Mr. Wolfe; and finally his years from 14-18 at the Big School, where he continues as an outsider, and the more reluctant paramour of the obese music maestro Dr. Fox. These are bookended by two brief sections set in the early 90's, when James has become a disillusioned middle aged Londoner, and largely detail his fascination with an older rent boy, with some very graphic, bordering on pornographic, passages.
Golding himself is an enigmatic figure - after much success with this, and a follow-up AIDS-related book in 2004, he seemed to have disappeared, and I feared perhaps he had himself succumbed to the plague. But then I discovered this: https://www.mansionglobal.com/article... .... and it appears he spent 7 years renovating an old palazzo on Malta, and then selling it for $11 million and moving back to London in 2016 - where, hopefully, he has resumed writing.
June 26, 2010
The first and last parts were almost too much for me - male homosexuality in graphic detail through an insecure and paranoid first person narrator. But the middle section, a vivid, bold and challenging description of his life during his boarding school years is easier to stomach, despite depicting child molestation in increasing intensity. Sexual aspects aside, the novel provides insight into the torments of being 'different'.
November 11, 2019
"Dear God, it's so simple: you dial, you speak, you see; and if you catch him at a loss, or pretending so to be, you just hang up, quietly. Done it before. Come on. Look: just go and have a bath, and a good think.
I have never going it easy to obey myself, so instead I take a shower."
I have never going it easy to obey myself, so instead I take a shower."
September 12, 2022
This monster of a book is as thick, girthy, engorged and heavy as I imagine the character introduced on page 6–Big Uncut Man—is.
August 6, 2017
This was a difficult book to read, and not just because of the subject matter. What I found most fascinating was how adept Golding is at showing the way emotionally vulnerable children are taken advantage of my molesters. James is preyed upon by the priests at his British boarding schools because they knew he was the kind of child who would mistake their crimes for affection and wouldn't expose their criminal behavior. At times The Abomination rambles and a good editor probably could have cut 100-150 pages and still retained the core story without losing anything. I look forward to reading Golding's second novel.
July 7, 2016
Drope-dead gorgeous prose and bracingly confronting subject matter, my only real quibble was that it felt a bit long-winded at times, but it's clearly his love of language which prevents him from pruning it back, which is easy to forgive.
December 24, 2019
La mayor abominación de este libro es su falta de estructura. El autor escribe, escribe, escribe, compulsivamente, venga palabras, venga metáforas. Aquí lo que importa es desahogarse, parece. Hasta ahí bien, un ejercicio de exorcismo como otro cualquiera. ¿Pero qué le queda al lector? Redoble de tambor: una mierda.
Venga, Golding, que lo puedes hacer mucho mejor, que yo lo sé. Ánimo.
Venga, Golding, que lo puedes hacer mucho mejor, que yo lo sé. Ánimo.
March 3, 2020
A highly elaborated novel.
I usually admire eloquence and the refined choice of words, but this novel is written with much artificiality and preciosity.
The novel is a ticket to the past of Santiago Moore Zamora and his aberrant life from the Catholic boarding school he was in to the cheapest gay bars in London. It details his dirty engagements with many men, his triumphs, and his losses.
For a debut, I wished the work was focusing more on the plot - since it reflected the writer's deep influence in other precedent literary works (like The Swimming Pool, The Loom of the Youth, and Lord Dismiss Us - to name a few). The plot here was very meaningless and the incidents were too common. It hardly was able to encompass the talent of the writer - for I do deem him as a talented writer but maybe in other coming works.
I usually admire eloquence and the refined choice of words, but this novel is written with much artificiality and preciosity.
The novel is a ticket to the past of Santiago Moore Zamora and his aberrant life from the Catholic boarding school he was in to the cheapest gay bars in London. It details his dirty engagements with many men, his triumphs, and his losses.
For a debut, I wished the work was focusing more on the plot - since it reflected the writer's deep influence in other precedent literary works (like The Swimming Pool, The Loom of the Youth, and Lord Dismiss Us - to name a few). The plot here was very meaningless and the incidents were too common. It hardly was able to encompass the talent of the writer - for I do deem him as a talented writer but maybe in other coming works.
February 8, 2019
I honestly don’t know how to rate this book. The initial and final part were so boring I had to skip a few pages at the end, a lot of very random confusing sex narrative. The middle part though, especially from when he starts to go to boarding school, is nice and you quickly get more and more interested in Iago’s life and “love” affairs.
My advice is to read only from part two to part four.
My advice is to read only from part two to part four.
Want to read
July 11, 2024I read the first 250 odd pages of this mesmerising novel about fourteen years ago and then things intervened and I put it aside and by the time I picked it up again I needed to start from the beginning again. Well I will, maybe this year (2024) but it will be soon. I read a marvellous third of the novel.
Want to read
October 28, 2008Another Chip Kidd cover. AWESOME.
October 10, 2012
Very disturbing
May 10, 2015
I found the book very prosy, and I kept hoping that I would finish it. Thank God I read it in an e-book format, so I didn't have to look up all of the words which nobody I know ever uses.
January 20, 2017
Gave up after a few pages and a few random checks further in to see if it improved at all. Not for me. All the makings of a vile read.
July 30, 2009
Somehwere between a 3 and a 4. I am still wavering about which one it is closer to.
April 10, 2017
Didn't finish...The book is called the Abomination and then the first part of the book was all about his gay lifestyle etc...and I just coulnd't get past the fact that the book was implying with the title that this was an abomination...so I quit...
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews