September book reviews 2010

Missouri by Christine Wunnicke, translated by David Miller (Arsenal Pulp Press, paperback)

Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man by Bill Clegg (Little, Brown)

Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan (Dutton)

Do Not Disturb by Carsen Taite (Bold Strokes Books, paperback)

From the Closet to the Courtroom: Five LGBT Rights Lawsuits That Have Changed Our Nation by Carlos A. Ball (Beacon Press)

Date with a Sheesha by Anthony Bidulka (Insomniac Press, paperback)

City of Strangers by Diana Rivers (Bella Books, paperback)

Space Cadet: The Tempering Way by Patrick Fillion, illustrated by Bob Grey (Class Comics, paperback)

by Richard Labonte

Missouri by Christine Wunnicke, translated by David Miller (Arsenal Pulp Press, paperback)—In a literary landscape littered with daunting doorstops, it’s a tonic to come across a short novel—a novella, really—that packs an expansive story into just a few poetic pages. Wunnicke’s atmospheric account of improbable romance was published to acclaim in Germany in 2006; Miller’s translation, though occasionally rhythmically clumsy, captures the quirkily flat but compelling affect of a foreigner writing about a place and a time more wholly imagined than deeply researched—though there’s a squirming authenticity to the writer’s description of head lice plaguing two men as they warily confront mutual lust.

Douglas Fortescue is a vaunted British poet and aesthete forced to flee to mid-1800s America with his brother after an Oscar Wildean scandal; orphaned Joshua Jenkyns is a wild-lad outlaw terrorizing the Midwest while carrying in his saddlebags Fortescue’s collections of poetry—enigmatic words that speak to the boy’s unarticulated sexual longings. Wunnicke’s depiction of their doomed love, beautifully bleak and emotionally astute, is a most uncommon gay romance.

Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man by Bill Clegg (Little, Brown)—The moral redemption at the core of Clegg’s relentless memoir about hapless addiction is likely as psychically searing for the reader as it was for the writer. This is a book of self-flagellating intensity and palpable paranoia, exhausting to embrace but impossible to put down.

Clegg, young and handsome and in love and at the top of the literary management game in Manhattan, was everyone’s ideal—until he encountered crack, at first an occasional high, soon a monster sucking away the essence of his life. The author ignored phone calls from long-suffering lover Noah, holed up in swanky hotel rooms for weeks-long binges, and eventually hit bottom, reduced to walking city streets in filthy clothes, shunned at hotel registration desks.

Clegg braids his story of a heart-wrenching downward spiral with flashbacks to his college days and his family traumas, hinting that both nature and nurture contributed to his addictive persona—but at the same time taking full responsibility for his failings. The harsh truth contained in this book is both hellish and illuminating.

Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan (Dutton)—One Will is straight, his best friend is gay—which is often an embarrassment—and he just can’t get along with an acerbic girl who hangs with them. The other Will is gay, and—except for an exquisitely intense online romance—is mostly a sullen, sarcastic loner. High school students living in Chicago suburbs distant from each other, they’re fated to meet one evening at a midtown porn shop. What connects them? That would be flamboyant Tiny Cooper, first Will’s queer pal, out and proud, at once a musical show queen and a hulking football player.

In this young adult novel’s alternating chapters, co-authors Levithan (gay Will) and Green (straight Will) capture with rollicking prose the angst of teen yearning. And the anguish: gay Will’s online fellow was fabricated by a female friend, a discovery that shatters the boy, until, that night in Chicago, he encounters a compassionate Tiny. Though cheerfully hyperbolic, this jaunty novel delivers simple truths about love and friendship. And, in the last chapter, fabulous singing and dancing.

Do Not Disturb by Carsen Taite (Bold Strokes Books, paperback)—Ainsley Faraday is on the executive fast track, a rising star at the Steel Hotel chain, assigned to bring a new property in Santa Fe up to snuff. Greer Davis is a hard-partying pop star who flees notoriety—disguised with a fiery red wig—when a clean-cut country songstress is found dead of an overdose on her bathroom floor. A first-class flight from Chicago brings the opposites together, and the sexual attraction is vivid and immediate.

There are complications: Ainsley is taking over a faded hotel owned until recently by the family that raised Greer and now managed by her cousin Drew; Greer is concerned that Ainsley will recognize her despite her disguise; and Ainsley’s not really smitten by redheads anyway. But love will find a way, despite Drew’s antipathy toward the takeover and Greer’s spoiled-star personality.

Taite’s tale of sexual tension is entertaining in itself, but a number of secondary characters—including Ainsley’s mendacious sister, Drew’s wise father with stubborn cancer and Greer’s flitty best friend Ethan—add substantial color to romantic inevitability.

From the Closet to the Courtroom: Five LGBT Rights Lawsuits That Have Changed Our Nation by Carlos A. Ball (Beacon Press)—From Stonewall to ACT UP to pro-marriage rallies, queer activists have taken to the streets to fight for rights, says law professor Ball. But this riveting book’s focus is on the parallel track of courtroom battles. The author blends lucid legal analysis, poignant portraits of the defendants and astute profiles of the attorneys involved in five cases.

From 1989, Braschi v. Stahl first granted a same-sex relationship family status in a case involving a gay man’s right to remain in his rent-protected Manhattan apartment after his partner’s AIDS death; from 1993, Baehr v. Lewin first addressed the issue of gay marriage in a landmark Hawaii lawsuit; from 1996, Nabozny v. Podlesny forced a rural Wisconsin school to acknowledge horrific harassment of a gay teenager; also from 1996, Romer v. Evans refuted a Colorado state amendment that would have made it illegal to protect gays against discrimination; and from 2003, Lawrence v. Texas ruled that government cannot criminalize private, consensual gay sex. Dry legalisms come alive in this brisk account of gay rights litigation.

Date with a Sheesha by Anthony Bidulka (Insomniac Press, paperback)—With six previous Russell Quant novels to his credit, mystery writer Bidulka has honed his formula to enticing perfection. His sleuth—who hails from the Canadian Prairie town of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan—is muddling through life as a private detective, a little bit bored and a little bit worried about cash flow, until hometown mayhem eventually sends him out into the world.

Previous books have seen our sleuth in France, New York, the Canadian Arctic, Africa, Hawaii and aboard a cruise ship. The exotic setting this time is the Middle East, where Quant has been sent by a distraught family to find out who murdered their son, there to buy antique carpets for a museum exhibit back in Saskatoon.

Half the pleasure of Bidulka’s novels comes from his atmospheric accounts of foreign lands. Equally satisfying—a trait shared by any good ongoing mystery series—is how Quant’s personal life, including a colorful mother and quirky friends, has evolved, particularly the sometimes wrenching ups and downs of the sleuth’s romantic entanglements.

City of Strangers by Diana Rivers (Bella Books, paperback)—Tales of women-only tribes set in a utopian world have long been a staple of feminist and lesbian fiction. What distinguishes this one—in addition to smooth writing and a fast-paced plo—is that peace isn’t the only path, utopia comes with quarrels, and not every man is a villain.

The story centers on 19-year-old Solene, taken captive by brutal Peltron to be the bride of his brother, the more sweet-tempered Torvin, back in the city of Hernorium. Her eventual escape leads to Peltron’s vow to annihilate the women’s idyllic village and to make slaves of them all. But the men are humiliated by a violent defense they hadn’t expected, and Peltron’s cocky, snotty son, Ramule becomes ransom for other women enslaved in the city.

Rivers, author of the six-novel Hadra series, adds emotional heft to the muscular tale by crafting complex women characters who don’t always get along, and by mixing into the story a couple of sympathetic men, including, in a nice touch, young Ramule.

Space Cadet: The Tempering Way by Patrick Fillion, illustrated by Bob Grey (Class Comics, paperback)—Fillion, founder of Class Comics, is a younger-generation queer erotic artist who crafts hyper-sexualized images in the tradition of Tom of Finland, the Hun, Etienne, Belasco and other venerable masters of muscle-and-cum imagery.

There are more than 20 comics in his catalog, among them Fillion’s own Camil-Cat and Boytoon series, Douglas Arder’s Tug Harder series, Johnny Murdoc’s Cruise Control series, and French artist Logan’s bear-oriented Porky series.

This new comic features brawny Byron, aka Space Cadet, who has come to the land of Ordovica to do battle with vile Baron von Phallus on behalf of the oppressed—among them sexy satyrs, flirty fairies and seductive centaurs. All the men’s muscles are massive and their eye-catching endowments are almost always engorged, certainly fuel for readers’ fantasies. But Fillion fleshes out physiques with an engaging storyline that, frequent sexual encounters aside, rounds out the fantastical setting and gives the assorted characters texture. By comic’s end, savior Space Cadet has instead been captured, and is fated to become the sexual plaything of the nasty Baron’s lusty warriors ... but the story is to be continued.

Richard Labonte has been reading, editing, sellingand writing about queer literature since the mid- ’70s. He can be reached in care of this publication at out@outonline.com.