Product Description

The story of Neill Cullane, a closeted, conflicted 21 year-old that lives in two worlds that seem light-years apart, but that he travels between in a beaten-up VW car. At home, he's the dutiful son of Frank and Grace, and devoted brother to Peter, whose battle with a cruel, disfiguring cancer pulls the Cullane family together, however reluctantly. But in the shadows of the San Francisco underworld, Neill finds release with his secret lover Vince Malone, a beautiful junkie/philosopher/thief whose burning desire for truth lights the path Neill always knew he'd travel. Through Vince, Neil learns about honesty and love and finds the courage to confront his family in the face of tragedy and loss.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1358632 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 232 pages

Review
"Trebor Healey's compelling tale of crisis around a family illness and an unexpected first gay love is poetic and reflective, angry, rowdy, funny, and triumphant." - Felice Picano, author of Ambidextrous and A House on the Ocean, A House on the Bay; "Love hurts, love heals - that's the crystalline message at the core of Trebor Healey's complex, accomplished coming-of-age story about a cautiously queer suburban kid whose heart is unexpectedly squeezed hard by a young junkie's quicksilver mind and beautiful lean body." - Richard Labonte, reviewer, Book Marks and Q Syndicate; "Sweet, sad, gritty, and real. Healey delivers coming out as apocalypse - tender, destructive, punk." - Michelle Tea, author of The Chelsea Whistle"

About the Author
Trebor Healey's poetry has appeared in dozens of literary journals, including the James White Review, the Chiron Review, Long Shot, The Santa Barbara Review and Evergreen Chronicles, and has accompanied the films Penny Arcade and Peep Show in G. His fiction has been featured in the Harrington Gay Men's Fiction Quarterly and has appeared online in the Blithe House Quarterly, Lodestar, Asche! and Tina. Healeys work has also appeared online in Queer Dharma: Voices of Gay Buddhists, Wilma Loves Betty and Other Hilarious Gay and Lesbian Parodies, Mama's Boy and Beyond Definition (also available from Turnaround), among others.

Customer Reviews

rough and sexy and pure
From the first sentence, I felt pulled in. Trebor Healey starts his book with a poetic metaphor, but rather than being flowery and sentimental, it's a hard-hitting, earthy, and, yes, romantic opening that made this reader feel that he was in extremely capable hands.

The end of that chapter is as beautiful and perfect as a poem. It hit me the way a poem does, like a revelation, as if the page caught fire and blew a veil off my eyes, and then burned a layer of insulation from around my heart.

This book makes me remember when I first came to San Francisco, when I was young and living on Skid Row. My experience was nothing like the experiences of Vince, or Neill, or Peter, but I believe those characters, and I like them. Hell, I love `em, to tell the truth. They got into my heart in about two minutes flat and are staying there quite comfortably. It's so easy to love all the people in `Through It Came Bright Colors,' because the writing comes from such a deep place.

Reading this book, I sigh, and ache, and love, and remember, and sigh again.

But oh Lord, the last chapter. The whole book cast a beatiful spell on me, all rough and sexy and pure, but that last chapter spun the whole thing into orbit. Brilliant and holy: my mouth was on the floor reading it, and my heart felt as if an ancient knot was being unfolded and loosened at last.

A few days ago, I wanted to start rereading it, having forgotten I had already given it to my best friend!

Complex characters, Gripping Narrative
For those of you, like me, who are sick and tired of the cookie-cutter characters present in many gay coming-out first novels, "Through It Came Bright Colors" is a welcome breath of fresh air. The characters are unlike any others I've experienced in recent gay literature. They're human in every sense of the word: real, complex, imperfect, and, at times, unlikeable. They've stayed with me well after I've put the book down, which is the highest compliment I can give a writer. The other posters here have nicely summarized the novel, but let me just add that "Through It Came Bright Colors" is ultimately about going into the wilderness (both literally and figuratively) to find one's true self. That wilderness (be it cancer, a run-down boarding house, or a hike in the mountains)transforms each of the characters, as they journey to discover the truth about themselves.

A Multi-Faceted (slightly flawed) Gem
This is not a love story. Nor do I think it was intended to be. It is, first and foremost, about the emotional growth of its narrator, Neill Cullane, a suburban youth confused about his sexuality and his role in his family. Although it might certainly, and rightfully, be viewed by the GLBT community as a "coming out" story, I think it is the latter theme, the exploration of family relationships, that ultimately distinguishes the book and makes it not only moving, but universal. Vince Malone, the charismatic, troubled street hood with whom Neill has his first sexual relationship, serves only as a vehicle through which Neill and the reader come to understand the intimate link between acceptance and love. Just as "Rain Man" is the story of Charlie Babbit, not his emotionally stunted brother Raymond, we know from the book's prophetic opening line that "Through it Came Bright Colors" is not a story of redemption for Vince. As with "Rain Man," the focus is on the character who has the ability to change and grow, Neill, and what his relationship with Vince teaches him about himself.

While Neill is exploring his burgeoning sexuality, his family appears, on the surface, to be coming unravelled. His "golden boy" younger brother Peter is undergoing a series of increasingly more disfiguring cancer surgeries and his parents are having difficulty coping. It is in the juxtaposition of the scenes of Neill's family (in present day and flashback) as they tentatively, awkwardly, knit together, with flashbacks to the nightmarish erosion of Vince's homelife that the book exhibits its major strength. Ultimately, Neill realises that the true pleasure of love is in the giving of it, not the receiving of it. When someone accepts your love, they also accept you. Individual scenes between Neill and each member of his family (including his macho older brother Paul, who, like Vince, pushes him away) tenderly, sometimes painfully, illustrate this.

At times the book has a bit of a cobbled together feel with some clumsy transitions between episodes in the Tenderloin with Vince, scenes of Neill's family life and the numerous flashbacks/reminiscences (with one particularly jarring shift of POV in a fairly short flashback sequence between Vince and a female psychologist that should have been either re-worked or expunged entirely). These things might easily have been remedied with the expansion of some sections (to smooth transitions) or perhaps by using a third person limited (as opposed to first person) narrative, but on the whole the book reads smoothly and coheres quite well. And these shortcomings are far outweighed by the carefully chosen language, rich with metaphor, and the overall emotional impact of story. I read this book several months ago and, I'll admit, the recent spate of reviews spurred me to contribute my opinion. All in all, I highly recommend this book.