Leavitt's 'Page Turner' is ironically titled

Chalk it up to bourgeois provincialism, but the first thing that must be said of Leavitt's latest novel, "The Page Turner," is that it is primarily a gay love story. But, of course, nothing that simple would still be praiseworthy.

Leavitt's main strength is that he has written a novel that is not content to just be a "shocking" gay love story. "The Page Turner" is not a coming-out story, but a coming-of-age story. It is not so much about orientation as aspiration and growth.

The main narrative threads of "The Page Turner" array themselves around 18-year-old aspiring pianist Paul Porterfield. The term "page turner" refers to one who manages the sheet music for a musician at a performance. Paul gets the rare opportunity of turning pages for his idol, the discontent concert pianist Richard Kennington.

REVIEW
	The Page Turner By David Leavitt Houghton Mifflin

Predictably, Kennington is immediately taken with youthful, earnest Paul, but they do not pursue their mutual attraction until a fortuitous reunion in Italy some months later. The central concentration of "The Page Turner" is Paul's metamorphosis from a servile, dreamy-eyed boy to a confident, self-aware man.

But "The Page Turner" isn't simply about Paul. It is also about the crumbling marriage of Paul's mother, about parents struggling for acceptance, about Kennington's promiscuity and his lover Joseph's kind reaction.

The wide array of well-crafted, believable characters, each with their own problems, needs and desires, populates the novel and is its strength.

Unfortunately, it is also this breadth of focus that renders "The Page Turner" a mediocre novel. With all its characters and angles, the story's force becomes too dispersed. You set the book down, finally, feeling less like you have been dealt a thunderous, cathartic blow and more like you have been standing in a light, emotional mist.

Leavitt was successful in creating sex scenes, generally a dangerous business in any novel, regardless of the genders of the characters. All too frequently authors fall into one of two broad categories: those who keep their descriptions cryptically, bewilderingly veiled and those who write almost medically detailed romps that would make Hugh Hefner blush. Leavitt expertly walks the middle line, crafting deliciously translucent, amorous encounters.

Leavitt's writing shows the influence of E.M. Forster and Oscar Wilde (unfortunately much more of the latter than the former). Of Paul, who is preparing to leave the San Francisco suburbs for his transformational visit to Italy, Leavitt writes, "his adolescence, which he had loathed, was as of today officially over. How interminable they had seemed to him, those years, a kind of endless Sunday afternoon of the soul, every shop locked and shuttered!"

Leavitt engages in the classic Wildeian quest for ever higher, more baroque and grandiose levels of arrogant overstatement. The excess verbiage becomes tiresome. Quickly.

Ultimately, Leavitt banks a little too heavily on his protagonists' sexual orientation. Although "The Page Turner" is a strong story of the needs and actions of a set of well-formed characters, it is as if Leavitt ultimately expects the novelty of homosexuality (and its cultural trappings) to bring together the story's many threads. Rather than condensing to a searing, vivid conclusion, "The Page Turner" simply evaporates.

07-06-98