Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin: book review

Giovanni’s Room (1956) is set in Paris in the 1950s.

The narrator is David, a young American. He begins at home with his parents arguing about his father’s philandering. He dislikes both parents, becomes unmanageable, and, at his earliest convenience, leaves home for Paris. He wants to start life anew, on his own terms; on his own conventional life terms.

In Paris, he proposes to a woman, Hella. And then he meets a man, Italian bartender Giovanni, and his life becomes anything but conventional for the times. Love, passion, conversation, expectation – the juxtapostion between his fiancé and his lover throws David into sexual confusion and tension. Being with Giovanni – is it a Parisian phase – where expatriates and artists play games of dangerous liaisons in an atmosphere of experimental freedoms – or is this a true relationship?

This is a novel of the times – a young man’s quest for intimacy that he could not get from his parents; a time of wanting and needing more from people; a time of unrepressed thoughts and desires; and of awakening, but also death. It is about the complex and complicated thoughts and expressions in David’s life that changes him forever.

The book is poignant and tragic, full of fear and shame, despair and doubt. It is introspective and articulately written. But, in David’s feelings of guilt and self-loathing, his bleak, negative attitudes are projected onto others, and there is barely an ounce of joy in this intense, short book.

MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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