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Deep Water Review

EM Kahn. Mark the name. With this 'first novel' we are introduced to a writer who shows the gifts to join the ranks of those writers who tell stories about people who happen to be gay but whose sexuality is incidental to the overall aspect of the novel. Think for a moment about the way the following works affected us: Jamie O'Neill AT SWIM, TWO BOYS, Michael Cunningham A HOME AT THE END OF THE WORLD, Brian Malloy THE YEAR OF ICE, Andrew Holleran THE BEAUTY OF MEN, Alan Hollingsworth THE LINE OF BEAUTY. Though Kahn is not yet in that special realm in which these authors create, given the beauty of DEEP WATER: A SAILOR'S PASSAGE he certainly has the promise of joining them.
Though written as a memoir about a young man's experiences in Manhattan, Gene (our narrator) is a committed sailor, spending his spare time from his occupation as a woodworker learning the ins and outs of sail boats and the spectrum of guiding all manner of small craft along the waterfront of New York, Long Island, East River, Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, and all the myriad odd islands that are the cores of mystery and history the sea breeds so well.
Gene hires a young lad Kevin to work in his shop. The two are committed to their work and gradually to each other as a tender relationship develops between them. Kevin is emotionally needy, being the progeny of distant parents beleaguered by alcohol and wanderlust, and subsequently adopted by a loving couple when he was a teenager. Gene is ten years older and wiser, and not the blond beauty that Kevin is, yet he sees his good fortune in finding Kevin and commits to this relationship wholeheartedly.
The experience they share, one that solidifies their bonding, is the sea and sailing. Gene teaches Kevin the ropes and they both set out on many watery diversions that, though terrifying at times (in keeping with the challenge of the sport), bring them together as one. They include friends on excursions to Florida and the Caribbean, sharing their lives with those whose lives run parallel in many ways. The memoir takes place from 1978 to 1995 - the era of the pestilence of AIDS - and Kevin contracts the disease, lives through it for four years, and finally succumbs, dying in the arms of his lover Gene. The manner in which this journey proceeds is some of the more sensitive writing about loss in the time of AIDS that has been written. After Kevin's death Gene carries on with the sturdy help of his friends and extended family and shows us how tragedy is part of the comedy of life: it is all in how we cope and proceed.
Some readers my overlook this book at first encounter, finding it simply too full of sailing terms and lingo, but Kahn knows exactly what he is doing in his writing style. He invites us into the realm of passion for the sea and for sailors buy teaching us the basics of getting out on the water, and by the mid portion of this immaculate novel, even the most landlocked reader will feel at ease with the mechanics that form the foundation of this tale. It is at that point that the majesty of nature at its most raw underlines the threads of the happenings in Kahn's story.
Books of this sort, books that deal with gay relationships and the presence of AIDS, can in the wrong hands become mawkish and tedious. EM Kahn is a natural writer and he knows well the limits of his and our psyches, knowing how to insert a small paragraph here and there in the narrative, paragraphs that give us the spirit of the people we are getting to know, and the gradual insertion of the ugly tragedy of AIDS. This is the work of a sensitive writer and is the reason why Kahn could progress to the ranks of the above mentioned fine writers - a gay writer who wholly understands perspective an is brave enough to talk to us about matters that just happen to be affecting the lives of gay people. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, April 05

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