Exactly how steamy is this story?
R
This book is steamier than the windows of the Model T Ford in Titanic, folks. It's steamier than Oaken Sauna. It makes July in Honolulu look arid.
Between Gabriel getting it on (or dreaming about getting it on) with every woman he sees—this is before he becomes a preacher, just so's you know—to the random hookups that John witnesses on his Sunday walks through Harlem, sex is ever present in Go Tell It On the Mountain.
That's not to say that the novel sensationalizes sex; actually, most of the characters have a very judgmental attitude toward it, and toward the pregnancies that it tends to result in. We think the constant references to sex, along with the way the churchgoing characters give it the side-eye, are a way that the novel reveals the hypocrisy of society. Everybody's doing it, but everybody's also acting like it's a huge sin.