Adam Carlson is probably the alter ego of the same author, Aaron Clarke, and like him, Adam did some odd choices with his career, but choices that probably saved his life.

Epiphany of Life is a gay novel only since Adam, the main character is gay, and he is researching the life of another author, Noelene, who was probably lesbian. Adam being gay is not what is causing issues to him, or maybe it’s if you considering that Adam has troubles to reconnect with his day-to-day life so much that rebuilding the one by Noelene becomes is safety net: if he manages to understand Noelene and her reasons, Adam will be probably able to understand himself and his reasons.

Adam becomes so fixated with Noelene and her novel, the task to rewrite it, incomplete and with gaps in between, that he almost loses the grasp with reality. But the gaps in Noelene’s life are a metaphor of the same gaps in Adam’s one, and so, when Adam will be hospitalized, filling those gaps will be Adam’s therapy to become “normal” again. But Adam’s normality is not that of the majority of people, and that is what makes Adam the only one able to understand Noelene.

The novel is not easy to read, a mix of Adam’s contemporary life, and Noelene’s fictional historical novel; often there is no way to see when one stops and the other begins, if not for the name of the characters and the changing in setting, but in a way, that is what is happening in Adam’s mind, he is losing himself in the novel, like the reader sometime loses their track of event.

I have the feeling that Epiphany of Life was a therapy in the therapy, and like Adam, also the author needed to put down in paper the chaos that was in his mind, and in doing that, he was filling the gaps of his soul and mind. So maybe this novel is not easy, but it’s for sure real, and moving.

Amazon: Epiphany of Life
Paperback: 80 pages
Publisher: Wordclay (January 26, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1604818433
ISBN-13: 978-1604818437

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