They remain close into Geryon’s twenties, evidenced by Geryon’s weekly phone calls home and the postcards he sends his mother during his trip to Buenos Aires. She and Geryon make up and regain the closeness they had before Geryon started to drift away from her. Geryon’s actions infuriate his mother, but she forgives him when he returns home after his and Herakles’s breakup. Geryon, a young boy who is also a winged red monster, reveals the volcanic terrain of his fragile, tormented soul in an autobiography he begins at the age of five. The creative potential of myth is evident everywhere in this story, ancient commingled with contemporary, familiar with strange. At the height of Geryon’s teenage rebelliousness, Geryon’s mother claims to “hardly know anymore.” Geryon retaliates against his mother’s accusations by continuing to rebel, eventually running off to Herakles’s hometown in Hades, a town on the other side of the island. The project of Autobiography of Red has its origin in myththe story of Herakles’ tenth labor, in which he killed Geryonand engages in new mythmaking, spinning Geryon and Herakles’ story in a different direction. This unspoken trauma seems to create distance between them, which only widens as Geryon approaches adolescence and begins spending all his time with Herakles, whom Geryon’s mother never meets. The two characters are introduced as teenagers, Geryon (still red and sporting wings) a sheltered, sensitive high-school boy and Herakles a sexy, rebellious roughneck. Despite their closeness, however, Geryon’s mother fails to notice that Geryon’s older brother is sexually abusing Geryon, nor does Geryon tell her about the abuse. When Geryon is a little boy, he cherishes the Tuesday nights when Geryon’s father and brother leave for hockey practice, since he gets to spend the night with his mother. Nevertheless, Geryon is close to his mother and finds her presence calming and protective.

The novel doesn’t offer many details about Geryon’s mother besides Geryon’s description of her in his autobiography as a “river that runs to the sea,” and the fact that she smokes cigarettes.

Geryon autobiography of red