Before I Lose My Style

Before I Lose My Style, the first novel by Mike Kaspar, is hard to get into, because the characters aren’t very interesting and there’s not much of a plot. Some of the characters are eccentric and sometimes slightly amusing, but there is very little depth to them and it’s often unclear what they contribute to the story, apart from amusing eccentricities.

The story is told in the first person by Damon, who has recently been dumped by his boyfriend. He’s picking up guys for one-night stands when the book begins. They are so inconsequential that we usually just hear that he had a date. He doesn’t seem to be especially distraught by his situation. He’s not moping or getting all depressed. He is responsibly holding down a job. His friends sometimes try to set him up with a date, but he doesn’t really seem to need the help. By the end of the book he’s in a relationship again, with a friend who has suddenly, out of the blue, realized that he’s in love with Damon. Yet this all happens without any crisis in Damon’s life. He’s intelligent, well educated, travels, hangs out with his friends, etc., but none of this is interesting enough to write a novel about, because there is no compelling plot.

There are, of course, the other characters. For example, Travis is a close friend of Damon’s who seems to be psychologically incapable of having sex. You might think that that would be interesting. The problem with it is that it’s not explored. It’s simply a fact. Travis is in love with Nathan, purely platonically, and he encourages Nathan and Damon to hook up so that Nathan’s and Damon’s sexual needs will be satisfied. All three of them are okay with this arrangement, but it’s not part of any further development of Travis’s character. He’s just a weirdo who doesn’t want to have sex, for no apparent reason.

All of the characters are like this, quirky in some way, occasionally amusing (perhaps), never very funny, and mostly just part of the landscape of Damon’s life. What their influence on him might be is hard to say. They are more like slightly interesting paintings on the wall, but they are not causal forces of any significance.