Description
One of These Things Is Not Like the Other
Winner of the 2005 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Men’s Mystery
Brotherhood is going to the dogs.
“You’re your own man,” Jake Barnes tells himself upon arrival at his father’s isolated cabin in the woods of Oregon. “You are yourself.” But in the strange world of One of These Things Is Not Like the Other, manhood and self are not to be so easily understood. Or trusted.
Quadruplet brothers. Raised in rural seclusion by their identical, namesake father. Now in their twenties, the Jake Barnes brothers are shocked by their father’s sudden suicide during one boy’s visit. More surprises come in the video he leaves behind, announcing that one of them is an unrelated outsider, and daring his sons to uncover the truth of their birth. From across the U.S. the brothers converge to find a woman who may be their mother, but twisted lust, murderous secrets, and shifting identities threaten their lives along the way.
“D. Travers Scott’s new novel is a tall tale like no other, insinuating itself into your psyche much the way the central figure pervades the dreams and actions of his troubled sons. A brand-new myth that crawls inside modern notions of brotherhood and fatherhood as well as the ways masculinity is traditionally conceived against the supposed American ideal of individualism; the book effectively flays alive all received wisdom on these various apprehensions, and it does so from the inside out, in ever-increasingly ugly eruptions from beneath the skin, revealing the shocking bones beneath the torn muscle and sinew of what we call a family. Scott more than delivers on the promise of Execution, Texas: 1987.” —Craig Lucas, playwright I Was Most Alive With You
“Populated by surreally incestuous brothers and sexy parapsychological polymorphs, D. Travers Scott’s latest novel One of These Things Is Not Like The Other is a jagged and multifaceted backwater noir, filled with revelation and full of life.” — Stephen Winter, director, Jason and Shirley
“This gorgeous existential mystery is a page-turner, a grand novel of possession from beyond the grave in which the nuclear family becomes an opera of identity puzzles. Surprises contend on every page. Father may know, but daddy knows best.” —Robert Glück, author of Margery Kempe
“Part horror, part magical realism, this novel is also a road story and an exploration of identity and sexuality … a delight to read.” —Chroma: A Queer Journal (UK)
“A book with serious bite. No one should ever accuse D. Travers Scott of playing it safe. One of These Things Is Not Like the Other is one seriously fucked-up piece of storytelling. (Please note, that’s said with admiration.) Brutal, twisted and sometimes completely frustrating… It’s rare to come across a writer this fearless and original” —The Weekly News (Miami)
“In 1997 D. Travers Scott made a splash with his exquisitely disquieting novel Execution, Texas: 1987. Now he returns with a corrosive new novel, One of These Things Is Not Like the Other. In it, a set of quadruplet brothers is raised by their older (but also identical) father. They all share the same first and last name. Then the story gets really strange.” —The Stranger (Seattle)
“Tender is the fright. If you put together the moody, specter-ridden dreamscape of Lynch and the lyrical wit of Fitzgerald, you might get something like Scott’s new novel… A dark tale of suicide, homicide, fratricide and incest in which sons try to deal with their father’s death…” —San Francisco Gate
“If that ain’t American creep-out catnip, what is?” — San Francisco Weekly
“A bizarre thriller/dark comedy/love story… Maybe it is kind of like Sesame Street—written by Clive Barker, directed by David Lynch, and starring Crispen Glover as Elmo.” — Instinct
“An amazingly adept wordsmith…who can starkly paint every detail against the inside of your eyelids so that the images linger long after you put down his hook. His new novel is no exception to the dark, gritty, psychological insight into human development that he demonstrated in Execution: Texas, 1987… This is a compelling read and experiencing it more than once helps to extricate the deeper existential meanings, which dance primitively at the edge of his gripping style. It was hard to put this hook down and I douht you will forget the experience. I am certain you will never think of family in quite the same way.” — Stonewall News Northwest
“When their domineering, demanding, and reclusive dad dies, four identical brothers set out to discover who they really are. One of them is gay — or is it two? And if their mother died giving birth to triplets, who is the fourth son? And when they start dying, who among them is the killer? This is a uniquely spooky horror-tinged thriller.” — Books to Watch Out For
