The Keeper by S.L. Armstrong & K. Piet
The concept of this book was good and also original; I know that it’s not the first time someone suggests that the love between Jesus Christ and his apostles was maybe something more than only theory. Actually in this book, Jesus is not part of the theory, but it’s again highlighted that Jesus said nothing against homosexuality.
Hadi is the last in a long line of male members of his family who inherited the job of being the Keeper; since his great-uncle was the previous one, and Hadi has never met the man, he actually doesn’t know what it means to be a keeper, and he has built a life of his own in Milan, working in the fashion industry. But then suddenly Asif, his uncle, dies, and Hadi has to take his place. Even if a contemporary gay man living in a western modern society, Hadi is from a very traditional eastern family, and the honour of the family is more important than Hadi’s personal life. And then, it’s not like Hadi has some commitment aside his job to bound him to Milan.
When he arrives to Setif, Algeria, to start his job as a keeper, Hadi realizes that there are root in his family he was never aware of, and that the legends he was told when he was a child are truer than what he was thinking. He is the keeper not of a family, but of a man, the same man his family has “kept” for millennia; and the keeping is more than simply protect the man, he has also to feed him, in a very, very personal way.
This is probably the part of the story that I didn’t completely understand; the meaning of the blood exchanging, the turning of religion in myth, the vampirism side of the story. But then, if you dig well, the same Jesus said “Take and eat, this is my body, drink this is my blood ... my body is real food and my blood is true drink ... Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him ...”. So the “blood” is an important part of the Christian mythology, and the bond deriving from taking the blood is a bond that is impossible to break.
In the end, considering the two men, even if the man Hadi is asked to keep is older (way older), he is like an ascetic, like one of those prophets who prowl the earth but in the end they don’t dig in it, they are detached from ordinary things like sleep, eat, sex… Hadi undertakes the job of being a keeper with a whole new meaning, and maybe also since he is the younger of all who preceded him: Hadi doesn’t want to renounce to his life, to every aspect of his life, even falling in love and having sex, only since he has a higher task to complete; he thinks he can have both, the keeper job and also a normal relationship.
The novel doesn’t go in detail of what will be the outcome of this decision, what will happen in 30-40 years, maybe even 50 if they are lucky. In this moment the most important thing is exactly that, this moment.
http://www.stormmoonpress.com/thekeeper.aspx
Amazon Kindle: The Keeper
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Cover Art by Nathie