Bare
Roots by Clifton SniderSet in
the 1960s and 70s, Bare Roots is a coming of age/coming out
novel about a sensitive, intelligent boy, Justin Crystal, up to the
age of nineteen. Justin´s whole life is a cycle of anticipation,
fulfillment and disappointment, joy and agony, as he struggles to
find out and accept who he is.
When Justin is seven, his father asks his mother,
Harriet, for a divorce. Not long afterwards, Justin and Harriet
move from Wisconsin to Southern California, where Justin is
surrounded by adult women: his mother, his grandmother, and his
grandaunt. Eventually mother and son move to Long Beach, where
Harriet has a job and meets Gerald, also divorced, whom she marries
after dating a long time. Although Gerald becomes Justin´s
stepfather, Gerald never accepts the role of father for Justin.
Throughout his life, Justin has a series of close
male friends, from whom he is separated for one reason or another.
With each of these friends he shares a private world, but as an
only child, he learns to live in his own fantasy world, reading
books, listening to records, particularly the Beatles, and playing
the piano. Fundamentalist Christian religion becomes an important
influence. It provides a few social outlets and a Biblical
education, but also it creates a lot of guilt, frustration, and
confusion, especially about sex.
Justin vacillates between desires for both sexes,
but when he moves away to Southern California Baptist College, in
San Diego, he has a passionate but chaotic affair with his roommate,
Russ. Despite their intense relationship and potentially
destructive environment, they are lovers throughout the school year
till both are injured in a motorcycle accident. While he is in the
hospital, Justin discovers Russ has apparently taken up with another
young man. When he returns to his Long Beach home, Justin attempts
suicide while his mother is in the hospital having a baby.
The events of the novel are those Justin imagines
as he swallows sleeping pills and Valium. While characters´
thoughts are freely given, especially those of Justin and Harriet,
the reader never knows for sure if these are the actual thoughts or
only those Justin, or the narrator, imagines. What the novel
reveals are the roots of a young life, as it were, laid bare and,
like roses planted with bare roots, ready to grow.
