Not Quite Mature  | Book Review | Advocate.com

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Not Quite Mature
Tom Bradley's Lemur may not score points with LGBT activists, but it's entertaining nonetheless.
An Advocate.com exclusive posted April 16, 2008
Not Quite Mature

What must happen at the end of all comedies? On the last page of this novel Spencer Sproul stands in fond reverie on the front stoop of his newly successful restaurant (significantly, a family-style establishment). At Spencer's side is his favorite employee, his "special-best busboy," Spud.

What is this place, other than a chapel? And what is the seven-foot tall fiberglass effigy of Lemmy, the restaurant's Lemur logo, other than a god, presiding over this sacrament? What color is Spud's busboy apron but bridal white? And as for the wedding party, who are they but the hundreds of morbidly obese customers queued up for the brunch buffet?

Like all comedies, Lemur is the story of a fragmented self becoming whole. And the wedding at the end is requisite, the bringing together of the conflicting elements of the protagonist's nature.

Spud is not exactly the most attractive character in the annals of fiction, yet Tom Bradley has cast him as the successfully won love-object. The fact that it's a gay marriage and that the bride is a compulsive nose-picker and borderline mentally challenged might seem calculated to anger activists. Tom Bradley has never been loath to anger folks with his writing.

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