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Title: The Trapeze Artist

Author: Will Davis

Narrator: Paul Boehmer

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-07-13

Publisher: Audible Studios for Bloomsbury

Ratings: 2 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

A man will endlessly torture his muscles until they shriek and complain. But he will not give in. He will take a hammer to his ceiling until the neighbors begin to watch from the window and the journalists knock at the door. He will continue to train and hack away at the house until it is finished and the trapeze is in place.

Although his parents thought he was nice and kindhearted and teachers saw him as a good boy, secretly he hated his drab, ordered world and longed for more. Then, when he was 14, Edward arrived at his school. Edward exuded the coolness of a latter-day Oscar Wilde. Edward listened to Patti Smith, watched Fassbinder films, knew the writings of Gore Vidal, and, one evening, would kiss him in the moonlight. Forty years old and fleeing from a life he can no longer handle, he stumbles upon the circus. Not knowing why, only that he must, he gets in his car and follows after it, refusing to listen to the doubts that plague him, determined to build a new home and family.

The Trapeze Artist draws together the past, present, and future of one life to create a work of startling dexterity and vision - a haunting and heartbreaking account of a child, a boy, a man, desperate to free himself from the suffocating weight of his desires, his family, and his grief. It speaks of what it is to grow up gay in a straight world, to be unable to communicate with those you love, of the sweat, passions, and tempers of circus life, and, above all, of the joyous longing to break free, and to swing higher and higher....

Members Reviews:

Entertaining read

I found this book quite entertaining, I enjoyed the main characters and the way they played of each other. It was difficult to follow at times with the book jumping between different times in the main characters life. But I enjoyed the book on the whole.

Terrible

Don't waste you time, this book has nothing to recommend it. Average writing, not a very compelling story and no insights at all.

Portrait of a man making his way in a confusing world

A shy, fourteen year old boy makes a friend at school, realizes he is gay, and - for the first time - feels truly live. But that is not to last, and he grows into a man, still living with his invalid mother, until - at age 40 - he finds the courage to run away with the circus, as the lover of an eccentric Romanian trapeze artist, When that adventure ends, he is still fascinated by the life he learned on the road, and makes drastic renovations to his mother's house to carry it on.

The story is told in numerous installments, alternating the three time periods mentioned above. The protagonist - whom the author never actually names - makes a very slow, dramatic and torturous journey from his dysfunctional, sheltered childhood to his own version of maturity, which involves following his dream, regardless of what common sense (and others) tells you otherwise. It's not an easy book to read, and somewhat depressing and tedious at times, but essentially a well-written look into a unique individual's mind and heart. I give it four stars out of five.

- Bob Lind, Echo Magazine