Book Review: Mea Musa
eviewed by David Steven Rappoport.
Mea Musa is not, as the title might suggest, a consideration of religious painting written by a Medieval monk. It is Kaz Rowe’s young adult novel, a consideration of love, sexuality and mental illness set in the anarchic environment of a Midwestern art college. Mea Musa is a coming out saga, a bildungsroman, and a love story.
Chase Branson, the central character, is a nominally heterosexual painting student. He likes the Old Masters, dresses in a nondescript manner while most around him would shame peacocks, and does not understand much about the vagaries of contemporary art.
Chase finds himself rooming with Arden Moore, a complicated, depressed performance art student. Arden is self-destructive, charismatic, and lost. In part, this is the result of an abusive relationship in high school, from which he is still recovering.
The young men develop feelings for each other that neither finds comfortable. Chase struggles to define his sexuality. He is prone to excessive introspection, but this leads to little clarity about his orientation, his roommate, or his inherent self-worth. Arden struggles with trust, alcohol, and depression. He inflicts injuries on himself—such as smashing glass bottles with his hands—in the name of performance art. Although neither man has the self-confidence nor the awareness to realize their passion is mutual, their need for each other grows. Ultimately, Arden’s dark impulses reach a climax, creating an emotional crisis that enables the two young men to reveal themselves. Arden gets help, and the duo begins a relationship.
Mea Musa seems more honest than some recent forays into similar subject matter, such as the films Kaboom and Art School Confidential. This is because Rowe’s novel is carefully considered and finely crafted. While its thematic concerns are not particularly new, Rowe succeeds by attending to craft. Rowe writes and structures well and has a gift for delineating complexities of character. Arden and Chase are troubled but not particularly exceptional young men. A less adept writer might have made far less of them.
While not comic, the novel never takes itself too seriously. There are moments of satire, such as when the protagonist encounters a mound of spilled popcorn in a hallway and steps around it just in case it is an art installation. Rowe might have better exploited the art school setting by adding more such moments. A less portentous title might have been helpful, and the climactic declaration of mutual love has some excesses. However, these are minor concerns.
Mea Musa is a notable effort by a very talented young writer with a gift for craft.