The Twilight Gods

Paperback

English language

Published Oct. 1, 2009 by Prizm.

(1 review)

London during the Great Exhibition of 1851 is a new world of technological advances, eye-popping inventions, and glimpses of exotic treasures from the East. For fifteen-year-old Norris Woodhead it's a time of spectral figures mingling with London's daily crowds, and an old rectory in a far corner of the English countryside, a great house literally caught in time, where answers to curious little mysteries await him. Confined by his family's financial woes, Norris suffers a lonely and unsatisfying time till the day he (and only he) notices shadow-folks in the streets. Then a strange widow appears, rents a vacant room in the house, and takes him under her wing. She becomes his guardian, slowly revealing those shadows' secrets, Norris' connection with them, and the life-altering choices he has to face in the end. The Twilight Gods is a retelling of Native American folktale called The Girl Who Married a Ghost. …

London during the Great Exhibition of 1851 is a new world of technological advances, eye-popping inventions, and glimpses of exotic treasures from the East. For fifteen-year-old Norris Woodhead it's a time of spectral figures mingling with London's daily crowds, and an old rectory in a far corner of the English countryside, a great house literally caught in time, where answers to curious little mysteries await him. Confined by his family's financial woes, Norris suffers a lonely and unsatisfying time till the day he (and only he) notices shadow-folks in the streets. Then a strange widow appears, rents a vacant room in the house, and takes him under her wing. She becomes his guardian, slowly revealing those shadows' secrets, Norris' connection with them, and the life-altering choices he has to face in the end. The Twilight Gods is a retelling of Native American folktale called The Girl Who Married a Ghost. Set in Victorian England, it's an alternative perspective on a gay teen's coming-out process, with Norris' journey of self-discovery couched in magical and supernatural terms and imagery.

1 edition

nerd teacher [books] reviewed The Twilight Gods by Hayden Thorne

I really wanted to like this more.

2 stars

Ignoring the back cover, I actually quite love this story of a gay boy coming to terms with who he is; I enjoy the tale of how he learns about his sexuality without it feeling over-burdened by excessive and irrelevant details or descriptions (in the way that many novels generally attempt to awkwardly explain LGBTQ people in the story, even when it focuses on that person). I adored a lot of it, and I kind of wish I'd had something like this growing up.

It's set in London and focuses on a boy who is coming of age (15), and his family is trying to push him into something he doesn't want: grooming him for coming of marriageable age. Much of the story is spent on his time feeling frustrated by the discussion of marriage: his oldest brother is collecting money for a dowry to get engaged, his two sisters …

Ignoring the back cover, I actually quite love this story of a gay boy coming to terms with who he is; I enjoy the tale of how he learns about his sexuality without it feeling over-burdened by excessive and irrelevant details or descriptions (in the way that many novels generally attempt to awkwardly explain LGBTQ people in the story, even when it focuses on that person). I adored a lot of it, and I kind of wish I'd had something like this growing up.

It's set in London and focuses on a boy who is coming of age (15), and his family is trying to push him into something he doesn't want: grooming him for coming of marriageable age. Much of the story is spent on his time feeling frustrated by the discussion of marriage: his oldest brother is collecting money for a dowry to get engaged, his two sisters are (annoyingly competitive with each other and) trying to find men to marry... Every party he's forced to attend has him talking with people who talk of nothing else, and he hates every minute of it.

I like that there's a symbolic nature of him being othered in many ways; not only does he feel different as he grows to learn about his sexuality, but he feels different in the pursuits and interests that he holds. There are a lot of great parallels.

The bit about the back cover is the bit where it's a "retelling of a Native American folktale." I'm rather curious as to which one (tribe/group affiliation), as it only gives the title: "The Girl Who Married a Ghost." I'd found the story in books about Nigeria and only found vague reference to it in the Northwest region of America; I really wish people would be more specific, since these stories aren't always things that are culturally shared between peoples.