Blossoms And Blood Paperback – July 27, 2017

It's ironic that Max is shamed by his desire for Astrid, because he treats her not as a sex object, but as an angel. Everything in the author's choice of words--which are precisely those a young adolescent would use--shows this. Safranco brings the reader intimately into Max's suffering. The title describes in itself the painful split between sexual desire (lust in the eyes of the church) and worship (also resulting in suffering in that the adulation is for a mortal creature and therefore "selfish.") A stringent moral consensus has gripped Max in a way he cannot escape.Astrid is a blossom. For Max, the natural act of an adolescent's blooming need for a creature not himself, not a parent, not Jesus, tortures him. It makes him look up to a vicious moron, engage in bullying himself through jealousy, and reject a girl who does show interest. A male reader can relive his own adolescent angst in _Blossoms and Blood_. And he certainly does not have to be Catholic. There's a universality here that makes it hard to put the novel down. Max is no fool; he is intelligent and serious. He is Everykid. Of course, you have to look well beyond Astrid to find his torturer.