The Blade Between

Sam J Miller
Completed 3/12/2021, Reviewed 3/12/2021
5 stars

What a strange and wonderful novel.  It’s an odd ghost story about gentrification and hate and ultimately about love.  It’s a strange juxtaposition, but it really worked for me.  I think what I liked most about this book was that the main character was deeply flawed, yet I still felt I could identify with him.  Perhaps was because he was gay and an addict and angry. Perhaps it was because of his strained relationship with his father.  The last book I read Miller, Blackfish City, won the Campbell Award in 2019 and was nominated for a few others.  I didn’t really care for that book, but this one felt leaps and bounds better.

The story follows Ronan Szepessy, a forty-something gay photographer living in New York City who goes back to his homophobic hometown to visit his ailing father.  When he arrives, he is astounded by the gentrification occurring.  He meets up with his first love, Dom, and Dom’s wife Attalah.  Ronan and Dom’s old romance flares up again and Ronan and Attalah create a scheme to try to put a stop to the gentrification.  Somewhere in the process, Ronan conjures the spirits of the town’s whale-industry past which amp up the hate and violence to horrific levels.  And Ronan seems to be the only one who can put a stop to it.

The stars of this book are the prose and the characterization.  The prose is not flowery, but the word choices and descriptions are simple, yet remarkable.  Miller paints the characters and the setting so clearly and with great feeling that I felt I knew the town.  Perhaps it is because I come from a failing town, though its gentrification was not as successful as in this story.  It was simply a pleasure to read this book.  

The characterization was tremendous.  Everyone felt completely real.  There were no cardboard, one-dimensional characters.  Even Ronan’s childhood bully was realistic, albeit a little stereotypical.  I really loved the character of Ronan and was able to feel everything that was happening to him.  It’s the first time in a long time that I felt such empathy for a main character.  Again, I think it was because he was flawed, realistic.  And his hatred for the town and his past mirrored much of the hatred that I held onto for a long time.  I really liked Dom and Attalah as well.  Jark, the gay billionaire running for mayor who was spearheading the gentrification of the city, was also a great character.  I couldn’t totally hate him because he was as multidimensional as the main characters.  

The ghost story aspect was what made this book rather odd.  It’s not a traditional ghost story.  It involves the spirits of the people who had lived there in the past and the spirits of the whales who were slaughtered and processed.  It’s not exactly a haunting that occurs, but a manifestation that Ronan brings about through his use of a false online presence to find dirt on the rich hipsters of the town.  This presence, Tom Minniq, wreaks havoc on the town under the guise of the scheme that Ronan and Attalah conjure in their fight against the gentrification.  The second half of the book, where all the hate and violence become manifest, is riveting.  

I give this book five stars out of five.  I was totally moved by the main character, horrified by the turn of events, and near tears at the ending.  I was bummed out that this book has gotten mixed reviews on Goodreads.  Not many people feel the same way I do, but I think that this is one of the best books I’ve read in a while.  I found myself reading it quickly without skimming, reading every word, and relishing in the way the sentences were constructed and flowed together.  I definitely will continue keeping an eye out for Miller’s books.  He’s a current author I definitely want to follow and see great things come to.