Conversation Pieces

Vol. 86 — Apollo Weeps

by Xian Mao

$12 $10.00 (paperback)
$5.95 (e-book)	EPUB	MOBI (unavailable)

Read a sample from the book.

Owl thought they had left their hometown in Iowa for good, but the promise of a story hidden in the catacombs of the historic Cassandra Theater brings them back fifteen years later. The story is not centered on the theater itself, however, but on Madeleine Grey, the theater's star actress and Owl's high school crush, and her twisted family tree.

Apollo Weeps is a love letter to theater and the twisting plots of Stephen Sondheim musicals. It is a modern adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera, as well as a meditation on race in America: Owl, a transracial Chinese adoptee, uncovers a story about a Black actor in the Midwest and the generational trauma his descendants face.

Across generations, a family tree's roots run deep.

Reviews

There’s a tonal weirdness about musicals that you’re either able to merrily roll along with (drink!) or you’re not. On one hand, the whole enterprise is joyous and playful and even silly; on the other, you were so emotionally destroyed by the end of Hamilton (2015, drink!) that you sometimes have to pull the car over to cry when the finale song comes on shuffle when you’re driving. The artifice of the theater, combined with the raw emotion that can come through in songs, offers space to get at some of the deepest truths of humanity. Warmly welcoming to musical theater nerds, clear-eyed about the legacy of American racism within and outside of theater spaces, and as cleverly constructed as a Sondheim play, Apollo Weeps is an exciting, weird, atmospheric debut. It’s easy to get drunk on.  (Read the whole review)
  —Strange Horizons, Jenny Hamilton, June 19, 2023

...I loved many things about [Apollo Weeps]. Ow1 was a fully fleshed out nonbinary main character. The over-the-top gothic history of both the town and Maddie's family was lushly sinister. I loved Mao's impulse to unflinchingly look at how trauma is passed over generations, how secrets fester, and at the unspoken debt small-town America owes to its early immigrants and minority peoples.
    It helps to return to thinking of Apollo Weeps in the context of an Aqueduct conversation. With so much stuffed into the text, all the bits and pieces form a shorthand that points towards larger ideas and issues. For me, Apollo Weeps does succeed, just as a means towards a different end than I might have expected.  
  —Locus, Caren Cussoff Sumption, June 2023

ISBN: 978-1-61976-230-5 (13 digit)
Publication Date: Jan 2023
paperback 164 pages