Book Marks
by Richard Labonte
October 5, 2009
The Sower, by Kemble Scott. Numina Press, 224 pages, $23.95 hardcover.
In this smart and slyly provocative inversion of the horror of AIDS, Kemble posits a wildly subversive world in which a single man can cure anyone of any disease – but only by passing on his seminal fluids. The plot conceit is deliciously outlandish: Bill Soileau, a San Francisco sexual hedonist of the first order, is infected while abroad with a manmade super virus that is said to miraculously heal all infections. Talk about being an object of attraction. Kemble is too nimble (and political) a storyteller to make sex the focus of his story, however. What gives this imaginative tale its heft is how the author surveys the world’s reaction to the shocking appearance of a world savior, with all of the religious and cultural implications of such an almost God-like power. Fundamentalist arguments against sexual behavior are shattered – sex with everyone is suddenly something that could be fundamentally good. This page-turner is part potboiler (Vatican henchmen, an American president suddenly eager for “gay” sex), part parable (with its Biblical antecedents) and pure entertainment.
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