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	Beyond Horrifying Abuse Lies Complex, Forceful Story By Vikas Turakhia Cleveland Plain Dealer May 31, 2006 http://www.cleveland.com/entertainment/plaindealer/index.ssf? /base/entertainment/114906437117700.xml&coll=2 Recommendations for Martin Moran's memoir, The Tricky Part (Anchor, 304 pp., $14), must include caveats. There's little pleasure in reading about the sexual abuse of an adolescent at the hands of a 30-year-old; the book is disturbed and frustrated. But if you persevere, a compelling story awaits, as Moran documents his adolescent nights with a man he calls Bob Malo, his recovery and his struggle to accept himself as a homosexual despite his 1970s Catholic upbringing. Malo enters Moran's life as a church camp counselor, but their boundaries shift when he asks the 12-year-old to help him fix up a ranch. While working, Malo builds the shy boy's pride -- his praise makes Moran feel included, as do their activities in his sleeping bag at night. The incongruity of being a "straight-A altar boy and a slut" excites Moran and stretches the relationship over three years. The author writes, "My own anger, whatever, wherever it is, feels lost or buried somehow in complicity . . . As if having wanted, allowed, has squelched any right I have to wrath or innocence." Despite Moran's conflicted view, Malo's destruction of his victim's innocence is unquestionably horrifying. When descriptions of sex are followed by lines such as, "Seventh grade and my fate is sealed," the absurdity of Malo having sex with a boy who has to remember to put on his orthodontic headgear at night is stomach-churning.
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