The Angel of History by Rabih Alameddine; Grove Atlantic, $27
There is a lot of conflict and negotiation happening in award-winning San Francisco-based author Rabih Alameddine's latest novel The Angel of History, a stylish gem constructed of love and loss. All of it forms a glorious excess of life, death, and haunting memory. The story, masterfully told, takes place in a single day as a man waits in the foyer of the Crisis Psych Clinic to be seen for bouts of hallucinations, the ceaseless voice of Satan swirling in his head, and a possible emotional breakdown. That man is Jacob, a gay, Middle Eastern, Yemeni-born poet with a solemn past and a present-day struggle that forms the rapidly beating heart of the story.
Taking up temporary residency in his apartment are Satan and Death, who embark on a cerebral duel for Jacob's soul. That soul is a tortured one, as evidenced by flashbacks told through Jacob's journal entries, validating much of his interior sadness and the longing he never quite manages to vanquish through sex, BDSM dungeon experimentation, drugs, or the simple passage of time.
This rich history is comprised of Jacob's childhood spent in Cairo, where his mother was a brothel whore ("I don't have to mention how my mother supported herself without a family, we can both surmise what she resorted to") and of his move to Beirut, his Christian baptism at the urging of his father, time spent in Catholic school catering to a nun who sexually abused him through holiday breaks, and an eventual move to America and the open arms of the San Francisco gay community. There he meets and falls in love with Doc, his life partner. They have an often precarious "open relationship" until AIDS claims Doc's life and decimates concentric circles of Jacob's friends. Survivor's guilt consumes his soul. "Misery is what you get for not dying �" misery, but some good stuff, too." It's all up for grabs, the good and the bad, by the Lord of the Underworld and the Red Devil.
Satan reminds Death that Jacob doesn't like anyone smoking in his apartment. "Fuck him," Death spits. Both of these gothic deities are outspoken, their banter catty, expletive-ridden, foreboding, and sarcastic. Satan, who believes "sanity is overrated," wants Jacob to remember his past, while Death would rather have him forget everything. They are joined by 14 saints: Catherine, Eustace, and other haloed spirits who anxiously flit into the two-bedroom apartment one by one. All of the saints have kept Jacob company for his time on Earth and attempted to bubble-wrap him from collapsing under the weight of life's agony.
While Jacob's plight is compelling and supports the weight of this beautiful novel, its intricate details are picture-perfect. Death has green eyes and blue-black manicured fingernails; Satan is always impeccably dressed; perched on Death's couch, the saint Pantaleon is vividly and hilariously described with "spastic hand gestures, bobbing brown curly hair that veiled and revealed his eyes many times per second, the Picasso harlequin top, and the blindingly fuchsia ballet tights that highlighted every vein and sinew." Alameddine, a daring and perceptive storyteller, adds a final descriptive touch that leavens all the darkness in his pages: "Pantaleon was the gayest of the fourteen, and the happiest. Satan loved him best."
Rabih Alameddine will appear in person at the Jewish Community Center, 3200 California Street, San Francisco as part of the LA Review of Books Radio Hour on Thursday, November 3, at 7 p.m. Tickets are $28 (with a two-for-one special code) available at https://www.jccsf.org/arts-ideas/larb-radio-hour/.