Ockham’s Razor by Alan Michael Williams
Even if it’s not clearly stated, I think that Micah, the Mormon boy who believes in the Ockham’s Razor theory, has a lot in common with his author, Alan Michael Williams, the Mormon boy who still likes religious study.
Micah is 21 years old and living alone; he was raised as Mormon by his mother, but his father was not, and already this caused him trouble inside the Church. When then he realized to be gay, it was a reason more to leave that faith. From that moment on, Micah tried in every way to find a plausible reason to be gay, he needed that, and he has never discarded any theory, he is almost obsessed in analyzing every one of them.
So, when he meets 17 years old Brendan, Mormon and gay, for him it’s joy and pain: he thinks Brendan can understand him, that they can walk a path together, towards the truth and far from the Church; problem is that Brendan has no intention of leaving the Church, au contraire, he is searching with all his own to find a way to stay inside the Church being gay.
As you can see, this is not a light book, sometime it felt almost like an essay on troubled adolescent. Sometime Brendan and Micah felt too small for the words in their mouths, but then, I thought, maybe they were the picture of the author, of what he went through, of who he became. Maybe, I thought, Brendan is the young author, when he still felt that to be part of something real he had to be part of the Church, and Micah is his older one, the one who understood that he can “be” without “being part of”. The author match made his two sides to find a way in the middle, he wrote the book to understand if he chose the right path.
There is a love story, and there are also some pretty intense sex scenes, but it’s more important the journey than the goal. As often when religion clashes with a not ordinary reality, the journey is not simple, it’s often sad, and the goal is not always perfect. But being Brendan and Micah so young, and also the author, maybe the journey is not yet ended and the goal can still change.
Amazon: Ockham's Razor: a novel
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Cover Art by Anne Cain