I have been waiting for the story to end in order to write a review of the whole thing. And I have it, but I don't know if it ¡s going to come out the way I want to. The language barrier. But I'm going to try. If there's something you don't understand, please ask me and I find a way to make it clear.
I liked A Love Born From Steel a lot. It's very well written, entertaining, and, in my opinion, there's a lesson there for all of us to learn. When I first started to read it I had some troubles with it because Jack and Ennis are very different to the original one. Then, I remembered a line from the Spanish movie
Lucía y el Sexo (Lucia and the Sex) that made me realize that the changes in the characters make sense, and that's exactly where the lesson lies.
The line from the movie is this one:
In Spanish: "La primera ventaja es que cuando el cuento llega al final no se acaba, sino que se cae por un agujero y el cuento reaparece en la mitad del cuento. La segunda ventaja y la más grande: que desde aquí se le puede cambiar el rumbo".
Translation: "The first advantage is that when the story reaches its ending, doesn't really finish there but falls into a hole and shows up again, right in the middle of the story. The second advantage and the biggest one: that from there its course can be changed.
Well, taking into consideration the above quotation, I think Proulx's Brokeback Mountain didn't finish with Jack dying and Ennis ending up alone and heart broken. At that point it fell into a hole and went back right into the middle, where Leslie picks up and gave it a different course. Through the chapters she showed us what can happen when we make the decision to follow our hearts instead of our fears.
At the beginning of A Love Born from Steel, Ennis finds himself at crossroads, when Jack shows up depressed, willing to take his own life. But instead of taking the easiest road, which was to convice Jack, once again, that the only life they could have as a couple was to see each other in a far off place and once in a while, he takes the riskiest and bumpiest road. He decides to give Jack a chance, no matter what could happen. Ennis, for the first time in his life, follows his heart and not his fears. And was rewarded because it turned out to be the perfect life.
Unfortunately, our life stories cannot fall into a hole and show up again in the middle. I wish it could! but we could learn from both stories. Proulx showed us the misery we can bring into our lives when we live in fear, and Leslie the happiness we can find if we decide to follow our hearts and take a risk.
Thank you Leslie! I'm gonna be missing those chapters, but as you said, I can always read it again.
