Brendan Wolf is the kind of man that gives me a huge boner. He’s a complex mystery who likes to exercise his mind as much as his body. Amidst the quiet life he seeks with his daily push-ups and flipping through pages of Jack London, he finds himself embroiled in outrageous situations involving a rich lecherous old man, a fanatical group of pro-lifers, a scheming brother & his wife and a boyfriend blinded by his passion. Despite his flaws and delusions, Brendan emerges as a fully-fleshed gay man struggling to find his place in this messy world.
Brendan’s consciousness is split between the physical world and the fictional world. He imagines he can control the way people see him. He wears carefully constructed identity masks so certain people will view him as a grieving Christian widower or the attractive boyfriend who can be witty and charming at dinner parties filled with model gay couples. It seems that for every new person Brendan meets, he invents a new past and a new name for himself. The reader himself isn’t even allowed to know Brendan’s true name till late on in the book. The more Brendan tries to hide the man he essentially is the more chaotic his life becomes and the less connected he is with those he cares about most.
Detailing scathing critiques of both straight groups of religious fanatics and shallow gay groups of friends, this novel is a savage attack on insulated communities within our society while exploring the isolation of a complex and compelling individual. All this with a rip-roaring plot that will get your heart thumping as the illusive and incredibly sexy Brendan goes on the run from the police. This gives the book a fantastic momentum so that it feels like a train running faster and faster, always threatening to careen disastrously off the tracks. Brian Malloy has a powerfully creative mind and I’d love to spend a shirtless great-outdoors weekend with him and a thick book, bundled up together in a cozy lamp-lit tent.
Thanks once again to Kurt for the wonderful photos that go along with this post. See more of his work here. Buy Brendan Wolf at Amazon.
Reviewed by Shaun Frisky Patrick Ryan’s prose are so damn sexy it makes you want to glide your tongue along the spine of the book. The words cascade together in an excited stream to form a richly textured portrait of a complex family over 40 years. Almost every section is a snapshot in the life of one of the family members exploring his or her perspective, zigzagging through their history to contrast the past against the present. Ryan evokes the emotions of each of these characters with such sensitivity you’d think their experiences were his own.
One of the sons in the family, Frankie, is a trickster causing each of the family members to look at their lives in a different way. He’s unashamedly gay, quite casually declaring his crush on Luke Skywalker at a young age. Later in college he has outrageous sexual experiences while his inhibited (closeted) brother Joseph makes a muddled attempt at cruising in a public bathroom. The painful sense of discomfort Joseph has in expressing his sexuality is drawn sharply against Frankie’s (ultimately-dangerous) free attitude towards manly lovin’. Frankie is a fantasist and it seems very apt that he’s obsessed with extra-terrestrial experience as it feels like he’s not quite of this world. You’d think such an oddball wouldn’t be able to maintain a compatible relationship with the gentle-natured mother he ultimately returns to, but the bond between the two is demonstrated in a heart-breaking final scene. This is essential reading for all gay men who have trouble connecting with their family sometimes, which I’m guessing is almost all of us! It’s highly recommended that you read this book aloud while in bed with your lover in between bouts of Luke Skywalker/Hans Solo role play.
Thanks again to Kurt for the fab photos. See more of his work here. Buy Send Me at Amazon.
Reviewed by Shaun Frisky
Let’s face it. Men in fur are sexy. Among the many treasures to be found within Skin Lane is a ravishing young straight man, aptly named Beauty, wearing a fur coat and driving the book’s protagonist to the brink of insanity with lust. This is a book which fearlessly unlocks the forbidden door of Bluebeard’s castle, exposing the sometimes sinister mechanisms of queer desire. After reading through the entire book during a few long late nights in bed with a naked man at my side, I was hungry to see the writer himself. It’s not often that when going to see a superstar of the stage and page like Neil Bartlett read from his new book that you are greeted at the door by the author himself and offered a glass of wine. I swear he was trying to get me drunk and take advantage of me!
At Gay’s the Word bookshop in London Neil gave his reading to a rapt audience tightly packed in between the shelves throbbing with queer titles. Of course, given his work with the theatre, Neil was a natural performer delivering a few sweet samples from the text. Afterwards he discussed the investigative journey writing this tense novel led him on. Mr F, the character at the center of the book, leads a tightly controlled life as a fur cutter. During the summer of 1967 he finds his ordered existence disrupted by a disturbing recurring dream where he discovers a naked male body strung up in his bathroom. After being frightened by it at first, he grows more and more curious and attached to it. Mr F searches throughout the novel to discover who the body belongs to and Bartlett says that this gave him an impetus to finish the book because he didn’t know what the ending would be himself. The result is a very literary thriller which wriggles through all the seedy dark corners of one gay man’s sexual imagination.
Skin Lane manages to successfully encapsulate how the urge to fuck can overwhelm a man’s life when continuously pushed to the back of his mind. It also charts the tragic path we all must travel from the figure of youthful beauty to the aged beast with his pernicious sexual obsessions. Desire makes gay men covet the handsome, young man’s body turning it into an object we not only want to lick, stroke and penetrate, but actually possess for our own. Perhaps the most nail-biting aspect to this thriller is the degree to which you might relate to Mr F yourself. I’m sorry to report that after trying to get me tipsy Neil didn’t sternly order me to get into the car with a beast-like growl, but I was satisfied with the mental hard-on his novel gave me. I only hope that we don’t have to wait another decade for Neil’s next book.
Many thanks and kisses to Kurt for the original photographs shot for this review. See more of his work here. Get your copy of Skin Lane here.
