Voice of Force
by G. Roger Denson
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Book Summary Information
Author: G. Roger DensonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2010-03-27
ISBN: 1451568622
Number of pages: 436
Publisher: CreateSpace
Book Reviews of Voice of Force
Book Review: Difference is Dangerous
Summary: 4 Stars
G. Roger Denson's new novel Voice of Force is touted to be about men, but there is a lot said in it about women too.
Written as a dossier of files leaked to the public from the Manhattan Prosecution's office, the contents comprise the history of a controversial criminal case. Diary passages and transcripts of prison conversations indicate that a murder has led to the conviction of a man who maintains his innocence despite that, after three years on death row, he faces imminent execution. It seems the guilt of the accused is one that the witnesses, the prosecution, and the jury hold in consensus. All believe the crime is the culmination of a longstanding sexual predation despite that the evidence is largely circumstantial-based on a diary, a short story and an opera libretto written by the accused, and of course the testimony of so-called witnesses-all of which we read directly instead of reading about.
Despite all this postmodern artifice (which can sometimes be annoying and mundane), the story is compelling for the rich characterizations and prose. Richest of all is what the characters betray about their own backgrounds, with all their ethical and sexual misgivings, and the misinformation the characters spread to make the lives of the two protagonists fit the views of the world they hold. For that matter, by the time you conclude that you're not reading a murder mystery but a story about the prejudice that pronounces who is guilty, you are absorbed by the quality of the writing and the deeply penetrating psychology of the characters. This is especially effective because this is a novel that travels the high road of thoughtful debate the whole way, showing all sides with remarkable clarity yet complexity. By this I mean the author refreshingly doesn't settle on representing the prejudice of one side-as-antagonist (as so many authors do) but the prejudice of all the parties, including the accused, leaving us to decide for ourselves who is right and who is wrong.
In many ways the novel seems to play off Camus's The Stranger as well as Dostoyevsky's Crime & Punishment, with all the debate, ambiguity, and ambivalence that marks the best existentialist work. Yes, sexual difference-between straights and gays, men and women-is central, but the novel burrows deep beneath the specifics of gender, identity, and culture to a source of humanity that is raw nerve and need. The presiding question that author Denson seems to be asking is, can anyone. with all his or her cravings and values, really ever get along with anyone else with their cravings and values?
Voice of Force seems to tell us that we are as consuming as we are consumed. And though we don't realize it until long after the character's sexuality has gripped us and perhaps aroused the prejudice that has been slumbering beneath our genteel lives, we learn that the drugs, ambition, greed, and most of all the fear that the various characters have hidden from view are ever more consuming than the sexual desire that stirs the sediments of hidden, even forgotten, prejudice up into a cultural tempest.
My only regret is that the author didn't abandon his project of using other genres beside that of the memoir he starts with to get his message and philosophy across. Appropriation of everyday media formats doesn't hold up nearly as well as the time-tested format of the conventional novel and its prose. But Denson does manage to revitalize the allure of the world of opera (at least for this opera-ignorant reader), largely because he doesn't try all that hard to do so.
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