James Baldwin

First published in 1957, this book attempts to tackle the conflict between homosexual and heterosexual love. It tells of David, a young man awakening to his true homosexual nature, through a relationship with a barman named Giovanni, as he awaits his fiancee's arrival from Spain.

Giovanni's Room

anet

‘Fighting will not make you stay. In French we have what is called une separation de corps - not a divorce, you understand, just a separation. Well. We will separate. But I know you belong with me. I believe, I must believe - that you will come back.' ‘Giovanni’, I said, I’ll be not be coming back. You know I won't be back. 

One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World' Baldwin's ground-breaking second novel, which established him as one of the great American writers of his time David, a young American in 1950s Paris, is waiting for his fiancée to return from vacation in Spain. But when he meets Giovanni, a handsome Italian barman, the two men are drawn into an intense affair. After three months David's fiancée returns and, denying his true nature, he rejects Giovanni for a 'safe' future as a married man. His decision eventually brings tragedy. Filled with passion, regret and longing, this story of a fated love triangle has become a landmark of gay writing. James Baldwin caused outrage as a black author writing about white homosexuals, yet for him the issues of race, sexuality and personal freedom were eternally intertwined. 'Exquisite... a feat of fire-breathing, imaginative daring' Guardian 'Excruciating beauty' San Francisco Chronicle 'Audacious... remarkable... elegant and courageous' Caryl Phillips

nica

“Confusion is a luxury which only the very, very young can possibly afford and you are not that young anymore.”

“Tell me,” he said, “what is this thing about time? Why is it better to be late than early? People are always saying, we must wait, we must wait. What are they waiting for?”

My father had money in his account which belonged to me but he was very reluctant to send it because he wanted me to come home—to come home, as he said, and settle down, and whenever he said that I thought of the sediment at the bottom of a stagnant pond.

I did not wait to have breakfast with him but only drank some coffee and made an excuse to go home. I knew the excuse did not fool Joey; but he did not know how to protest or insist; he did not know that this was all he needed to have done. Then I, who had seen him that summer nearly every day till then, no longer went to see him. He did not come to see me.

People are too various to be treated so lightly. I am too various to be trusted.

Annie Millman

"I have never reached you,” said Giovanni. "You have never really been here. I do not think you have ever lied to me, but I know that you have never told me the truth”

Why, you will go home and then you will find that home is not home anymore. Then you will really be in trouble. As long as you stay here, you can always think: One day I will go home. 

Lindsay

The morning weighs on my shoulders with the dreadful weight of hope.

There are women who have forgotten that to be a woman doesn't simply mean humiliation, doesn't simply mean bitterness.

If you cannot love me, I will die. Before you came I wanted to die, I have told you many times. It is cruel to have made me want to live only to make my death more bloody.

It would help if I were able to feel guilty. But the end of innocence is also the end of guilt.

Macy HB

Yet I also suspected that what I was seeing was but a part of the truth and perhaps not even the most important part; beneath these faces, these clothes, accents, rudenesses, was power and sorrow, both unadmitted, unrealized, the power of inventors, the sorrows of the disconnected.

For a woman, I think a man is always a stranger. And there’s something awful about being at the mercy of a stranger.

Giovanni looked at me. And this look made me feel that no one in my life had ever looked at me directly before.

Then perhaps, life only offers the choice of remembering the garden or forgetting it. Either, or: it takes strength to remember, it takes another kind of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both. People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget, court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare. 

But, above all, I was suddenly afraid. It was borne in on me: But Joey is a boy. I saw suddenly the power in his thighs, in his arms, and in his loosely curled fists. The power and the promise and the mystery of that body made me suddenly afraid. That body suddenly seemed the black opening of a cavern in which I would be tortured till madness came, in which I would lose my manhood.

biddy

"I have never reached you," said Giovanni. "You have never really been here. I do not think you have ever lied to me but I know that you have never told me the truth—why? Sometimes you were here all day long and you read or you opened the window or you cooked something—and I watched you—and you never said anything—and you looked at me with such eyes, as though you did not see me. All day, while I worked to make this room for you."

gosh this is the kind of rage that shakes you to your core

nikki

“You want to leave Giovanni because he makes you stink. You want to despise Giovanni because he is not afraid of the stink of love. You want to kill him in the name of all your lying little moralities. And you—you are immoral. You are, by far, the most immoral man I have met in all my life.”

“Giovanni,” I said, helplessly, “be careful. Please be careful.”

He gave me an ironical smile. “Thank you,” he said. “You should have given me that advice the night we met.”

That was the last time we really spoke to one another.

“I have been alone so long—I do not think I would be able to live if I had to be alone again.”

“I often wonder what I’d do if there weren’t any books in the world.”

“He made me think of home—perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.”

Don't like the homophobia and subtle racism.

Susan

devastatingly beautiful, lines made me throw the book across the room

sukan

When David meets the sensual Giovanni in a bohemian bar, he is swept into a passionate love affair. But his girlfriend's return to Paris destroys everything. Unable to admit to the truth, David pretends the liaison never happened - while Giovanni's life descends into tragedy. United by the theme of love, the writings in the Great Loves series span over two thousand years and vastly different worlds. Readers will be introduced to love's endlessly fascinating possibilities and extremities: romantic love, platonic love, erotic love, gay love, virginal love, adulterous love, parental love, filial love, nostalgic love, unrequited love, illicit love, not to mention lost love, twisted and obsessional love . . . .

a devastating story of a soul laid bare in the way that an animal bares its teeth

Charlotte Hedges

« perhaps he is a fool or a coward but almost everybody is one or the other and most people are both. »

what a gut punch. what a book. i have no words i think for the amount of emotions i have felt in such a short time, 150 pages seems short but my goodness what a story. what a writer. this book truly pulls you in immediately but this is not something that can be put into words, you really have to read and experience it in order to understand just how deep and heavy this is. 

what a tragic read that i will carry with me forever. thank you to everyone who has ever recommended this to me and to my best friend who gifted me this book on my birthday.

florine

« perhaps he is a fool or a coward but almost everybody is one or the other and most people are both. »

what a gut punch. what a book. i have no words i think for the amount of emotions i have felt in such a short time, 150 pages seems short but my goodness what a story. what a writer. this book truly pulls you in immediately but this is not something that can be put into words, you really have to read and experience it in order to understand just how deep and heavy this is. 

what a tragic read that i will carry with me forever. thank you to everyone who has ever recommended this to me and to my best friend who gifted me this book on my birthday.

Definition of gut wrenching. So insanely beautiful but reading it made me feel sick. All-encompassing.

“Americans should never come to Europe,” she said, and tried to laugh and began to cry, “it means they never can be happy again” 

Definition of gut wrenching. So insanely beautiful but reading it made me feel sick. All-encompassing.

“Americans should never come to Europe,” she said, and tried to laugh and began to cry, “it means they never can be happy again” 

soot

Devastating. Incredible to read out loud and sink your teeth into.

widya

"The groundbreaking novel by one of the most important twentieth-century American writers--now in an Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics hardcover edition. Giovanni's Room is set in the Paris of the 1950s, where a young American expatriate finds himself caught between his repressed desires and conventional morality. David has just proposed marriage to his American girlfriend, but while she is away on a trip he becomes involved in a doomed affair with a bartender named Giovanni. With sharp, probing insight, James Baldwin's classic narrative delves into the mystery of love and tells an impassioned, deeply moving story that reveals the unspoken complexities of the human heart. Introduction by Colm Toibín"--

Drew Nerbas

An amazing story about human nature with a large emotional impact, loved every page

anna g

this book drew me in and spat me back out so quickly but I loved it it was so intensely beautiful I can't wait to reread it one day

Ghofran Mustafa 

'your father or mine, should have told us that not many people have ever died of love. But multitudes have perished, and are perishing every hour—and in the oddest places —for the lack of it.'

I'm utterly heartbroken!
Been avoiding this book for so long, till I feel like I'm in the perfect mood for it.
And now I feel it's gonna be one of my favorites for this year.

Ryan Mateyk

Call Me By Your Name could never!!!!! (jk it could and it did, but this also did!)

Arin

Elisavet Rozaki 

"Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition."

Fenix Voliton 

I honestly don’t think I have the capability to make a coherent review on this book, other than saying that it’s so so beautiful and tragic, and Baldwin’s prose made everything feel even more raw. 

envee

Bella Baxter

I think this might be one of the very few books I’ve read in my life where I was really struck by the tragedy and emotions of the work.

Maria

“People who believe that they are strong-willed and masters of their own destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception.”
i’m sure that there’s not much that i can add to this that hasn’t already been said. baldwin’s writing is beautiful, his narration so vivid that it makes this story all the more devastating. giovanni’s character gutted me all the way to the end - his need for truth and love so in contrast with david’s inability to express that love and accept it, and in turn also accept himself. the room in itself a character of its own, alive and suffocating and fearsome. just beautiful and heart-wrenching all around. i look forward to reading more of baldwin’s work.

Easily some of the most elegant and intelligent prose I have read. This is a novel that truly feels /crafted/ - it is purposeful and clear in the ideas it wants to communicate and in the ways it influences the reader.

honestly what is there even left to say??@?!@?/1?!? i think what was most etched in me is this feeling of tension, of any veneer of normalcy or tranquility always being chased with the distant roaring thunder of its end, & it's experienced both by david as the narrator and weaved in through the narration by baldwin so expertly. & until the end, both giovanni & hella has seen through david so, so clearly, down to his core and knows that absolutely nothing moves him; and he still can't bear to look beneath the lies he buried himself in. like an ostrich's head buries to the ground.

Giovanni's Room

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