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RARE & SECONDHAND GAY RARE & SECONDHAND
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Fiction of Gay Interest
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Plot / Content: Rating: G According to the dustjacket: "Below decks on a big liner an intense and curious life goes on. It is in no way like the orderly realm of the passengers. Noisy, sensual, crowded, the men of the crew make their own world. "Harry Shears shipped on the Cyclamen for a reason. His job was that of a steward - a winger, but his purpose was to find out what had happened to his young half-brother. Danny had disappeared overboard on a previous trip and nobody knew why. Suicide, presumably, but for what possible reason? "Very quickly, Harry is caught up in the life of the ship. It is a world without women and some of the men are glad to take the woman's part. The rewards, in comfort, influence and flattered vanity, are immediate. The final result, when the 'girl' is too old to play courtesan any more, is usually a life ruined beyond repair. In this strange, perverse half-world Harry Shears is immersed. He too could easily take part: in his own nature there is a strong vein of homosexuality. But he is repelled by the shrillness and self-deception of it all. For him affection and quietness are what matter, even in an affair between men. He cannot either enter or avoid the world of the queers." Martin Foreman adds: Winger's Landfall is an intriguing novel that on the one hand gives us a glimpse into a very different world from the one that we now live in (although elements remain in modern-day cruise ships) and which on the other hand makes a valiant but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to present a mystery that only detective world can resolve. The merchant navy in which Harry Shears serves - which in a less than a decade would give way to long-distance air travel - presents a rigid society in which the passengers ("bloods") are served by obsequious white Brits while the menial tasks of cooking and cleaning are carried out by Goanese and other Asians. Within the British contingent , social relations are determined by rank and overt sexuality, with the most effeminate men taking women's names and squealing with delight whenever a "tough" approaches them. Harry's sexuality is his own affair, but it is clear his preference is for young masculine-appearing men like himself. Lauder skims over the question of age in this raucous world, but a key element of the plot is the attraction the exists between some cabinboys - whom we assume are between sixteen and eighteen years old - and the older crew. Shears' half-brother, Danny, was a cabinboy, while Shears himself is twenty-four, although he acts with the caution of a man ten years older. As the ship heads across the Indian ocean, Shears gets to know other members of the crew and gets closer to the cause of his brother's demise. That dénoument both satisfies and irritates; it satisfies in that the mystery is resolved, but it irritates in the knowledge brings Harry no relief, no sense of what would now be called closure. Nor does the story end there. As the ship docks at Tilbury, the question remains whether the boy which Harry has fallen for will stay with him on shore? Despite its faults - the pace is slow, the mystery lacks drama, the story is occasionally muddy - Wingers' Landfall lingers in the memory. We have glimpsed a vanished world and spent time with a man that we have come to like and respect. This is a book that should be found in any serious library of gay fiction. Background / Biography: Several books by Stuart Lauder can be found on the internet, but there appear to be no biographical details about the writer available. Reviews: Arbery Books also sells secondhand and rare non-gay fiction and non-fiction. Click here for our full list. |
"The 'Cyclamen' glittered blue and green, picked out in white, in the electric brilliance of the Sydney morning, berthed alongside the sleek ocean terminal at Pyrmont 13. Harry Shears decided at once that he didn't like the look of her. Nasty, those cold sea colours. Even the new double-decker wharf, all glass and show-boat curves, looked more sea-worthy. To the slightly dotty, unseamanlike name, so typical of the Line, the colour-scheme added a note of disturbing irrelevance, betraying the floating-hotel preference. She was a ship designed for dreamlike voyage along the coasts of fantasy, the offshore islands of Illyria; but for the humdrum commerce of the Sydney-Tillbury run she inspired less confidence. However, the Company Chairman's wife could take the blame for that, as also for the vine-leaf chintz in the First Class cabins. What was more to the point, in terms of mundane technicalities, she had a murderous roll." opening paragraphs Secondhand booksellers |
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