 |
NEW GAY BOOKS RARE & SECONDHAND GAY RARE & SECONDHAND RARE & SECONDHAND OTHER
All Rights Reserved Having problems viewing this page? It performs best in Mozilla Firefox. 
|
Gay Fiction
Condition: Very Good Spine fading, very slight damage to back cover, pages foxing, but spine unbroken and apparently unread. Plot / Content: "explores the realities of life for gay men in the harsher light of the late nineteen eighties. These stories are peopled with those who look back to days before AIDS overshadowed us and with young men who now confront the challenge of their first relationships." (from the cover) Background / Biography: Robins founded two gay presses: Third House Publishers, with novelist David Rees, and Trouser Press. He is currently rumoured to live in South London. By the same author (use Search facility in left column to check if currently available on Arbery Books): Easy Stages Our Hero has Bad Breath Undo Your Raincoats and Laugh Reviews: Tea? Please. Milk, no suger. I'll take a biscuit if you've got one. So what've you been up to? Seen any films, plays? No, I've been too busy. Just time to look at a book occasionally. Peter Robins' latest collection - Summer Shorts. Well, I liked his early stuff - Undo Your Raincoats and Laugh and Our Hero Has Bad Breath. God knows there are few enough humorous gay writers. But this book's different; it's not so funny and it's got its dark side. He's developed this colloquial style that lets his characters speak for themselves even though the voice is always his. That doesn't matter; it holds the book together. Anyway, you're a stranger sitting on a park bench listening to an old woman, a silent figure hearing your young lover explain why he stayed away for so long, an acquaintance listening to a boy telling of a young soldier he once knoew. You're in Britain, quite often a generation in the past, when the country had a quiet self-confidence and stolidity that's since disappeared. Come to think of it, it's both a very British book and a very gay one, although neither word appears much. One of Robins' strengths is telling you one story while only hinting at the more important one underneath. Passing's my favourite. It's a wonderfully drawn picture of a forty-year-old with no money but a brash self-confidence masking his loneliness. If only the Cockney accent were a little less thick... Connaught Circle is good too, as a suave hustler in Delhi draws a delicate web around a reluctant English tourist. I also liked Echoes, about a boy at the turn of the century still to young to understand death and sex, and It'll All Be Possible, about another boy a generation later. Not that all the stories succeed. Robins can be a bit heavy-handed. In both Have You No Consideration? and Country Pursuits the point is made at length and is no real point. Nearly Perfect leaves a bitter aftertaste while No Man's Runner is either too subtle or has no subtlety at all. But don't be put off, he's an interesting writer even when he fails. Why? Because he tackles aspects of life that other gay writers ignore and looks at them from an unfamiliar angle. These are not the love stories, the young-man-meets/falls-for/loses-young-man that make up so much gay writing. Robins looks elsewhere and sees the details others miss. If he has a major defect it's that he never quite reaches his potential, he never shows the world as weird, as untrustworthy as he obviously sees it. Maybe that's the subject of his next book. In the meantime, read this one and see whether you agree. Martin Foreman (1987) Clicking on advertiser links on this site may allow these companies to gather and use information about your visit to this and other websites to provide you with advertisements about goods and services presumed to be of interest to you. |
Quote from this book "To be honest, I never really did understand much of what the guy was on about. For instance. This would have been early on - when I hadn't been with him more than a couple of nights - he assured me everything would become as clear as daylight if I'd only relax and give it time. Well, I did. Gave it a whole fortnight. Most of what he talked about is still half as clear as mud to yours truly. And could he talk! Always putting things very nicely but - all in all I never could get my bearings with him. " 'What about Athens?' : opening paragraph Secondhand booksellers |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
