Book Review: God Says No

Hannaham’s novel follows Gary through his ill-fated attempt at marriage, furtive sexual encounters in public restrooms, a new openly gay start in Atlanta, and a stint at Resurrection Ministries, which Hannaham pens as a gay rehab center where Gary persists in his attempts to purify himself and squelch his homosexual longings.

Hannaham’s naïve and self-conscious protagonist suffers from several concomitant forms of discrimination—homosexuality, near obesity, racial otherness in the South (his college roommate complains at being paired with a “fat coon”)—and this makes his struggle exponentially more difficult. Unaccepted in both the church and the superficial gay nightclubs of Atlanta, Gary feels incapable of being true to himself anywhere. Even in reparative therapy, where he can admit to both gay desires and Christian faith, he is forced to make daily tallies of his SSAs (same-sex attractions), which are numerous thanks to his attractive ex-junkie roommate named Nicky. Gary says upon first meeting Nicky:

It wasn’t just Nicky’s chestnut-brown hair, his gently crooked nose, or his skin, smooth and tan as oak tag, that distracted me from Jesus’s plan. From the fist moment, everything floored me: his casual posture, those puppy-dog eyelids, always half-closed, the scar that cut through his right eyebrow, the shy smile . . .—Oh boy, I could go on.

The sincerity with which Gary describes romantic longings such as these is poignant, as is the way he self-medicates his emotional pain with things like Mickey Mouse and treats from Dairy Queen. Hannaham is sharply attuned to the pathos of food; the reader’s heart breaks for Gary every time he joyfully and evocatively describes a waffle with “a scoop of butter on top that looked like ice cream,” or a banana fudge sundae with “piles of nuts and whipped cream on top, Nilla wafers stuck in around the side, like a fence, and M&M’s whose color rubbed off on the white fluff.” At one point, feeling suicidal, Gary scans the sides of the highway for a tall sign from which to leap, but looking at all the fast-food ads just makes him hungry.

This all sounds depressing and pathetic, but Hannaham describes Gary’s ordeals with compassion and humor, which keeps Gary’s tragicomic misfortune and despondency from becoming overbearing. Hannaham also laudably reserves judgment on his characters: even as he shows how Resurrection Ministries only perpetuates the shame and self-loathing of its residents, he never mocks the ex-gay movement unfairly. We see that these are all men going through immense pain, no matter how bizarre and misguided their method of dealing with it.

The real achievement of God Says No is Gary’s singular voice—simple, gentle, distinctly Southern, and entirely sincere. Through Gary, Hannaham is keenly observant of the gay experience and the havoc that sexual repression wreaks on the psyche, without ever letting the novel become a humorless or preachy jeremiad. There is a pleasing cartoonish quality to the narration; even at its bleakest, Hannaham never lets us forget that we are seeing the world through the eyes of a grown man who is madly in love with all things Disney. God Says No is both funny and sorrowful, while making the important point that even in a modern America, growing up gay can be a harrowing experience.

James Hannaham, a graduate of UT’s Michener Center, is scheduled to appear at Domy Books on September 14th at 7pm and at BookPeople on September 16th at 7pm.