When Jonathan Died
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| Author | Tony Duvert |
|---|---|
| Original title (if not in English) | Quand Mourut Jonathan |
| Translator | D.R. Roberts |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | Gay Men's Press |
| Released | 1978 (eng. trans. 26 September 1991) |
| Media Type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 176 p. (paperback edition) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-85449-154-6 (paperback edition) |
When Jonathan Died is a novel by Tony Duvert, translated by D.R. Roberts. It was first published in France as Quand Mourut Jonathan in 1978.
[edit] Plot introduction
Jonathan is a 27-year-old artist living in Paris who befriends a single mother and her six-year-old son, Serge. When Serge is eight, his mother asks Jonathan to look after him for a week, which they spend together at Jonathan's country house in southern France.
[edit] Plot summary
Jonathan and Serge become intimate friends and their intimacy is highly erotic and sexual (though the book contains little explicit sex). Jonathan, smitten with the boy, is distraught when Serge returns to Paris. They are brought together again when Serge is ten, and their sexual activities continue. Serge is sexually very demanding, and Jonathan obliges his every whim.
While Jonathan and Serge are separated, the sexual side of Jonathan's paedophile desires begins to dominate his behaviour. He eventually seeks out other young boys and encounters several in anonymous sexual liaisons; he is rejected by some and finds no real satisfaction in sex with the others.
Serge, fatherless and miserable at home with his aloof and demeaning mother, decides to run away to be with Jonathan. He sets off to find him, but becomes overwhelmed by hopelessness, and when confronted with a busy road to cross at night, commits suicide by throwing himself under a fast-moving car.
The story is not narrated by Jonathan, but it is told in some parts from his point of view. The novel is an unusually frank depiction of love between a man and a boy, and presents what Duvert considers such relationships' potential faults and beauty. The story forms a part of Duvert's radical critique of present-day Western culture's views and valuation of the nuclear family, child sexuality, sexual abuse, paedophile desires, and the nature of love.
Duvert portrays the tragic emotional effect that an intimate relationship can have on a child when he is too young to deal with the powerful emotions that come with it.
