 |
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: Good Cover: some wear to edges and corners, creasing and soiling. Book: ink and pencil inscriptions on pre-title page; pages browning as normal. Binding tight. Plot / Content: "The Story of Harold is a Dantesque excursion through a garden of tortured and unfulfilled relationships: one with a woman whom Terry Andrews sleeps with and cares for, but cannot love completely; another with a surgeon, father of six, who is Terry's most cherished - and most unreciprocating - lover; and another with a sad young boy, already doomed to a life of insecurity and failure, whom Terry strives to redeem - even as he prepares his own suicide. As Terry beguiles the boy with further spellbinding exploits of Harold - the hero of his famous book - the reader follows Terry, with terror and pity, to the end of his appointed journey." (from the cover) Background / Biography: Terry Andrews was the pseudonym of George Selden Thompson (14 May 1929 - 5 December 1989), who wrote children's stories as George Selden, the most famous of which was The Cricket in Times Square. (continued on Wikipedia) Reviews: Once upon a time there was a writer called George Selden who wrote a wonderful story for children called The Cricket in Times Square that was published in 1960 about Chester the cricket who ends up living with a boy whose parents are struggling to make a living selling newspapers in New York City’s busy subway station. (Take a breath, children...) There’s a cat called Harry and a mouse called Tucker and there’s humour and suspense and sadness and the book was so good that no-one was surprised that it won a Newbery Honor Award or that the writer went on to write more children’s books, which made him some money although none were as famous as The Cricket in Times Square. And once upon a time there was a children’s book writer called Terry Andrews who wrote a wonderful story for adults called The Story of Harold, which has a six-year-old boy who is frighteningly insecure, a twelve-year old boy who is blind, a welfare worker with a death wish, a happily married doctor with six kids who needs to get laid – and whipped – by every man he can find, a young widow with a teenage daughter, a fictional dwarf whose magic is failing and (Take a breath, children...) a writer of children’s stories called Terry Andrews who no longer finds pleasure in life but who loves and needs all these other people and who finds in the six months that make up the diary of this book that his emotions are stretched to their limits. Out of this strange mix comes an amazing novel with fully-rounded characters, which avoids sentiment where sentiment appears inevitable, and where sex and sado-masochism are treated as normal aspects of personality instead of sources of titillation. Each day reveals another sliver of reality, such as the love-irritation that adults feel for small children, the ability to love some people too much and others not enough, and the paradox of the “slave” who controls his “master”. Everything comes to a climax at a small dinner-party where people’s futures are at stake and the reader – or at least this reader – finds himself at the end of this warm and wonderful story trembling with Terry as he had earlier worried and smiled. And of course, beloved children, you will have guessed that the George Selden who wrote The Cricket in Times Square and the Terry Andrews who wrote The Story of Harold were the same person – George Selden Thompson, who died in 1989. You may have a copy of The Cricket in Times Square, and now, if you’re old enough, you can get The Story of Harold, which is becoming rare, but luckily the cricket, the cat and the mouse who live together happily at Arbery Books have one copy for sale to the first lucky person who offers them £20 (plus p&p ...). Martin Foreman 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 "Again last night, for a little while, I was able not to be alive. I was only the life of two people whom I do not know, people perfectly anonymous. I died, was nothing except what they shared: no heart, brain, body, soul, sex - nothing left, apart from their idea of me. The bliss that derives from oblivion is not a simple thing. I live only for such incidents. And soon, not even them." opening paragraph Secondhand booksellers |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
