Tony
Heyes (contact) has
told me that spring has arrived in England and that he and his partner
are itching to travel. So we're glad that he has taken time to reviewBoy Meets Boy
and
Looking For It
  Looking for ItBy Michael Thomas Ford Published by Kensington Books 2004 ISBN: 07582-0407-8 Michael Thomas Ford’s Looking for It is the story of six weeks in the life of an (almost) representative group of gay people. There is Mike, a gay bartender who has been hurt in a relationship and is frightened of being hurt again; Simon, still grieving over the death of his partner of forty-three years; Russell, who is not so much out as outré and his uptight partner, John, a teacher of mathematics who is almost a desiccated calculating machine himself. Their relationship is experiencing a seven year hitch. Then there is Greg, Russell’s colleague at the department store in which they work; Stephen, an accountant who is half in and half out; Thomas, an Episcopalian priest who is only just acknowledging to himself that he is gay and Gavin, his choirmaster, who is gay and divorced and in ignorance of all the other characters until pretty late in the story. Finally, there is Pete Thayer, a deeply disturbed young man whose conflict over his own sexuality manifests itself in violence towards those who share it. Mr. Ford introduces to each of his characters gradually. Over the six weeks of the story the lives of all of them are altered by a series of events and accidents. The catalytic events in the story are Mike’s chance meeting with Thomas and Greg’s and Stephen’s far more violent chance meetings with Pete. Mike is driving home from the bar one night when he almost runs Thomas down in a snow storm. He crashes his truck (why a bartender would be driving a truck is not immediately apparent. It seems a profligate use of his resources.) into a snow drift to avoid him. Discovering that Thomas’s car has run out of fuel, he offers to run him home, thereby discovering Thomas’s calling. They are intrigued by one another and Mike, surprised that Thomas is not censorious of his working in a bar, invites him to drop round one evening for a drink. Safe in the knowledge that this is unlikely, he promises to pay a reciprocal visit to Thomas’s church. (There is clearly a cultural divide between the US and the UK here with regard to the relationship between bars and the church. When I was younger one particular seat in our local gay bar was referred to as “the bench of bishops” as it was used by a number of Anglican clerics after their monthly deanery meetings.) To Mike’s surprise, Thomas turns up one Saturday night at his bar and is not phased to discover it is a gay establishment. Mike subsequently telephones Thomas and invites him to a Thanksgiving Day dinner at Simon’s house. Meanwhile, Russell tries to pair Stephen off with Greg. Subsequently, Stephen gets beaten up rather badly by Pete, whom he has picked up at a sleazy cinema. He claims to have fallen on the ice and denies all knowledge of an assault. Russell and John’s relationship goes from bad to worse and Russell temporarily moves in with Simon. The group attend a Carol Service at Thomas’s church despite most of them being unbelievers. They gather at Simon’s for Christmas only to be called away to Greg’s bedside. He, too, has been beaten up by Pete. Stephen, having by now attempted suicide, is in the same hospital, so they visit him whilst they are there and discover the link between his and Greg’s assaults. By the New Year Stephen has come out to his family and Simon has recognised Gavin, the music director from Thomas’s church, in a record shop and hooked up with him. Gavin is unaware that he knows Thomas. All the friends gather for a party at Simon’s where cider – clearly a less potent potion in the US than the in the UK, where it is the beverage of choice for students and down and outs - is on offer for those who are driving. Russell and John, Simon and Gavin, Mike and Thomas and, possibly, Stephen and Greg look set fair to establishing firm relationships. To some people this may seem too tidy an ending but Looking for It conforms beautifully to Miss Prism’s definition of fiction: the good end happily and the bad unhappily. It’s a pity that Mr. Ford leaves tantalising gaps in the story - how Mike’s invitation to Thomas to join him a Simon’s party came about, the details of Greg’s estrangement from his family, Thomas’s outing of himself to Stephen his meeting with Gavin when their mutual gayness is revealed. These in no way detract from one’s enjoyment of the story but if they were filled in that enjoyment would be prolonged. It is the mark of a good writer that the reader ends up wanting more. Stephen’s coming out scene with his mother is very movingly told. The novel engages the reader from beginning to end and is thoroughly satisfying. It can be recommended without reservation as a rattling good read. |
 Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan Published by Harper Collins Children’s Books 2004 ISBN: 0 00 719137 5 Imagine a society in which sexual orientation is regarded as simply another aspect of personality, like the ability to do a clean weld, juggle with Guinness bottles or bake a Victoria sponge as light as an angel’s kiss. Such is the world described in David Levithan’s Boy Meets Boy; or almost. Boy Meets Boy is the story of a group of friends in high school as told by one of them, Paul, who was made aware of his gayness by his teacher when he was in kindergarten. (She wrote on his report, “Paul is definitely gay and has a very good sense of self.” His parents are completely unfazed by this.) The story is clearly a fantasy, an account of the world as it could and should be. One of the star players on the football team is a transvestite who plays in full drag. There is scarcely any homophobia in the school. Paul’s life becomes complicated when he meets a boy, Noah, who has newly arrived at the school. They are immediately attracted to each other and a promising relationship seems in the offing. Unfortunately things are never straightforward. Paul has recently been dumped, for no apparent reason, by Kyle who has been studiously ignoring him. At the most inopportune moment the recently bereaved Kyle starts to make overtures again. Kyle, it seems, is bisexual and doesn’t know which way to turn. At the same time Tony, Paul’s best friend, is having problems at home. Paul met Tony by chance in a bookshop and they struck up a deep friendship. Tony comes from another town. His parents are very religious and regard gayness as an abomination because they think the bible says it is. (It also forbids tattooing [Lev. Ch. XX. v.28], never mentions homosexuality and doesn’t define “abomination” - but we won’t go into that.) Being of a kindly disposition, Paul responds in a warmly tactile way (as you do) both to Kyle and to Tony, who is depressed and bracing himself to stand up to his parents. Paul’s generous responses are widely and wildly misinterpreted and a rift with Noah ensues. Meanwhile, a rift has also opened up between Paul and Joni, his closest female friend. She has taken up with a brainless jock called Chuck and is furious that none of her friends approves of him. By the end of the book Paul and Noah are together again, Tony and Kyle seem to be at the beginning of a closer relationship and Joni is making tentative steps towards a reconciliation. These are the bare bones of the plot. It’s working out is absorbing and, at times, humorous. Mr. Levithan is extremely coy about himself on the book’s dustcover, doing a sort of verbal fan dance that conceals more about him than it reveals and telling us only what he is not. The reader is left equally as puzzled by the book. It is published (at least in the UK) by the children’s division of Harper Collins so one is confused as to what category it falls into and about how to assess it. It is not immediately apparent at whom it is aimed or what the author’s intention is. How does one define children? Is the book meant to hold out the possibility of a brighter future to gay adolescents or to reassure them that they are not alone? The world described is somewhat claustrophobic and introverted. The children are completely focussed on their school lives and the rest of their own society, let alone the rest of the world, seems to be irrelevant. There is no wider context, so the reader is left wondering if the liberality the children enjoy is widespread or peculiar to their town. That said, the book held my interest all the way through. I could have wished that the author had devoted a little more attention to his characters’ interior states and to have been less anxious to reach the end of his story so speedily. Confining himself to a first person narrative, Mr. Levithan was unable to adopt the omniscient authorial pose. This is a shame as there is enough potential here for him to explore the psychological consequences of many of the perplexing situations faced by young people. What he has done he has done very well but I wish he’d done it more amply. The assumption that young people have only a short attention span seems to inhibit many authors from fully exploiting their material. Even in modern society there is still room for the expansive and leisurely, if not the three-volume, novel. To sum up, this is an enjoyable but tantalisingly brief tale. |