Reviewed by Jess
TITLE: The Monkey Cages
AUTHOR: Casey Charles
PUBLISHER: Lethe Press
LENGTH: 278 pages
RELEASE DATE: May 5, 2018
BLURB:
In the summer of 1955, sixteen-year-old Tommy Cadigan finds himself helpless in the face of desire, especially when the man that wears the face is his high school swimming coach, a young Korean War veteran who is still recovering from receiving a “blue ticket” discharging him from the military because of his homosexuality. Unsure if his infatuation is returned, Tommy distracts himself with the attention of a local bully, who hustles older men at night besides a decrepit zoo in Boise’s park. Tommy soon finds himself in the midst of a scandal that threatens to ignite the entire town…and his life will never be the same.
REVIEW:
If you’re like me, you’ve never heard of the Boise homosexuality scandal of 1955. It happened so fast, in such a small community, that it becomes easily overshadowed by many of the other Lavender Scares of the time. But for the kids involved in it, kids like the fictional Tommy Cadigan in this book, the entire nightmare was anything but insignificant. This story revisits a painful time in US history through the eyes of a teenage boy who just wanted to be loved in a way that felt natural to him.
The first half of the book sets the time and eases us into a tone of youthful nostalgia. It’s full of timely slang and pop culture references, and I like how Tommy doesn’t embody any of the stereotypes of the 1950s we see in movies and TV. He and his best friend, the snappy and philosophical Mormon Freddie, both start discovering their same-sex attractions at the same time, but when Tommy becomes embroiled in an uncomfortable public sex farce with his longtime crush, he starts to pull away from living in the edge. He becomes closer with his football coach, a young Vietnam veteran who works out at the YMCA. Tommy thinks their love is nothing but pure, until the little scandal at the Monkey Cages comes back to haunt him and the rest of the closeted gay men in town.
This story takes a sharp turn in the second half, and it will keep you gripped until the end. It’s a true “actions have consequences” story, but we’re not exactly sure which actions intended to have what consequences. Of course homosexuality should not be criminalized, and nobody should be penalized for love. But what happens when underage teens are in the mix—especially underrepresented, bullied gay teens? Are their voices allowed to be heard? And what happens if we don’t like what they have to say?
As for the romance itself, it’s seen better through both the lens of the era and through Tommy’s own eyes. Though there are passionate moments of burgeoning sexuality and sweet ramblings of a young person in love for the first time, it’s still an imbalanced relationship between a teenager and an adult. If you ask me—a millennial, gay, and at one point, a very dumb gay child—Coach is a predator, no matter if he and Tommy loved each other. But to deny Tommy’s real emotions, humiliations, and experiences would be a disservice to his character and the story. He did love Coach, and to be dragged through a courtroom for that is absolutely heartbreaking, moral quandary aside.
Also, their relationship asks us to put ourselves in a different time, when being gay meant, for the most part, being terribly lonely. It meant being without peers or adults who mirrored your own experiences. Being gay meant seizing every opportunity for same-sex intimacy, even if it wasn’t healthy for either party, and I think that’s exactly what happened with Tommy and Coach.
And Coach, a veteran and sufferer of PTSD, is not a one-dimensional character who heartlessly preyed on an innocent child. He’s not in the right, but he’s also a victim in a different way—of the times, of the war, and of conversion therapy. He and Tommy had a relationship that is not meant to make the reader swoon, it’s meant to make us think, to make us wonder what brought these two men together and kept them together for so long in such an unforgiving time and place.
This is not an easy read by any means. The ending is not tragic, but it’s definitely not happy. I didn’t expect to learn as much from this book as I did, to become so invested in a specific time and location. In terms of story arc and pacing, it stumbled a bit in the first half, becoming a little slow before part two really brought it. And some of the emotional outbursts in the courtroom came off as more stilted and scripted than passionate. But for the most part, this is a really good, intense read that highlights a small and sad time in gay history.
RATING: 
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