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RARE & SECONDHAND GAY RARE & SECONDHAND
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Fiction of Gay Interest
Plot / Content: Rating: G "Laurie Kingston has no illusions abut the homosexual side of his own character. He is aware of it, but in his day to day life as an assistant in a Lonon bookshop, he does not allow it to dominate him. His closest friend, until he meets Tom Beeson, is Susan, a pretty Jewish girl, who shares his enthusiasm for painting. "With a job that interests him, a rewarding hobby, a flat or his own, amusing evenins with Susan at their art club or elsewhere, Laurie feels that he leads a full and free life. The entry of Tom into it disupts this fabric and shows him what a lonely bondage inverion can become. "Tom is not an invert, but his life, too, is enclosed within strict limits, those of his service as a regular Guardsman and of the prejudices of his class, And Susan - wh ois also attracted by Tom - though she seems to be happily independent, has to make an uprooting wrench to free herself from the strict discipline of her family. "Set in London and Italy, The Plaster Fabric is a perceptive and compassionate story about young people today, and about the 'private hells' that can lie so close beneath the surface of everyday life." (from the jacket) Background / Biography: Martyn Goff was a long-standing member of the British literary establishment and administered the prestigious Booker Prize for 35 years until his retirement in 2006. The Youngest Director is one of several novels he wrote with homosexual themes / characters. Reviews: Arbery Books also sells secondhand and rare non-gay fiction and non-fiction. Click here for our full list. |
"Laurie first saw Beeson at Marble Arch. It was an early winter's day at lighting-up time. Faint mounds of mist clung to the trees, and the air smelt of fog. Outside the Park ordinary people hurried to ordinary houses, while the traffic edged slowly forward. By the gates were barrows piled with fruit, decked with deceptive signs: a large figure 'one', followed by the shilling sign and the symbol for a pound weight. Closer inspection revealed a tiny figure 'six' on the other side of the shilling, invisible, it seemed, until the fruit was in the bag. But no one was buying, and the barrow boys, mostly little old men at this hour, were talking in clipped phrases or striking their hands across the chest to keep warm. . . . Along Tyburn Way there were two fruit barrows, some Irish labourers who had come to work for Wimpeys and stayed to live by their waits, and Beeson. Beeson stood alone. He was a Guardsman and in uniform: tight, rough battle-dress and a flat cap that reached almost to his large, calculating eyes. He was at once threatening and stupid, to be distrusted and protected. He was tall and well-built, and he stood with a natural grace, his weight on one leg, his eyes travelling slowly up and down the traffic, across the cinema hoardings and back to the fruit barrows. In the mixture of twilight and yellow lamps his face was deathly white and quite smooth. His nose was slightly arched and the large eyes were brown. He and Laurie studied each other carefully, but the two sets of eyes, the one calculating and the other excited, skirted each other like boxers stalking round a ring." opening 1st and 3rd paragraphs Secondhand booksellers |
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