Book Buzz

Edited by  DAN SAVAGE, TERRY MILLER

Savage and Miller are the married couple (they got married in Canada) who started the IT GETS BETTER video campaign on You Tube as a result of a slate of lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered teens who committed suicide due to bullying. They were hoping for one hundred, maybe two hundred at best, after they publish their video on You Tube. With in a week there were over one thousand videos. These vignettes are taken from the videos. They are all sad tales when they describe the bullying but all uplifting as writer after writer talks about finding his or her acceptance with friends and family. The first message in the book is from President Obama.

Now the videos will have their own web site so that young people who need to hear these messages in five, ten or twenty years will be able to. Power to the people. Good on Dan and Terry.

www.itgetsbetter.org

WES FUNK

Baggage is a novel of a mennonite teen, Sam, moving into the city, Saskatoon, from his parents rather strict farm: no TV, but radio and lots of chores and church. After a few weeks of cooking school he gets a job at Vi’s, good home cooked food, nothing fancy. He works under Slash the middle age, gruff, pot bellied cook who slips out for a smoke when ever he has a chance. A couple of sisters do the majority of the waiting. Soon Slash is picking up Sam on his way to work as they become good friends and eventually more.

Baggage is a light read; highly unrealistic. But it is a feel good book of people taking care of each other, trying to build relationships and community. Good for when you want a trashy read.

JILL MALONE

It’s the story of Claire, who is raising her boy and grieving the death of her aunt, an author of field guides for mushrooms (well, actually Claire wrote them for her – the first deception in the book) and Liv, the carpenter she hires to re-do her aunt’s house. Liv has a tendency to haunt the bars looking for young and willing girls to bang, but it’s more out of diversion than actual desire. She is tired of the one-night-stands but doesn’t want the vulnerability of commitment. Of course, they end up together. But there are complications –one of whom is Bailey, Liv’s best friend who is also in love with her.

Far from being a book about simple relationships – because there are no such things – A Field Guide to Deception has an incredible sense of dread. You really root for these women to make a go of it, yet everything they say and do dooms them from the start. As Liv says at one point, “We suck at this.” And they do. But so do many other couples, and they manage to stay together. Do Claire and Liv stand a chance? It’d be mean of me to tell.

Malone underwrites and underplays the drama beautifully, sketching her characters with languid surety until they’re fully formed. This book is less about plot than it is about human nature, so genre readers may find this slow going, but I found the people here so genuine that the paucity of plot points didn’t bother me in the least. But the last twenty or thirty pages, which contain a startling event the ending turns on, move the story firmly and clearly to conclusion.

MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM

Peter is an art dealer; he is in love with beauty. He buys and sells because he is hunting the beautiful. Peter’s wife, Rebecca, has a 23-year-old brother, Ethan, known as Mizzy.  Mizzy is gorgeous, unreliable, a former drug addict, a Yale drop-out, “one of those smart drifty young people who seems to imagine that youth and brains and willingness will simply summon an occupation, the precise and perfect nature of which will reveal itself in its own time.” Rebecca dotes on her little brother, even to the point of giving him money, money that may be used for drugs. Peter sees his brother-in-law as a Rodin sculpture: a living sculpture. Coming home, Peter hears the shower running. He walks into the bathroom and, through the steam, there’s his wife as she was two decades earlier: taut, youthful, sexy. He is taken aback, moved, aroused. But of course it is Mizzy. Gradually Peter is seduced by Mizzy’s youthful beautify and his charm.

Great ending. Very good read.

ARMISTED MAUPIN

If you are a fan of Tale of the City, you will love this new installment. If you aren’t a fan but want to give them a try don’t start here. The earliest novel is the series are definitely the best. Start with the first Tales of the City. Mary Ann returns to San Francisco with her life a whirlwind. Her old friends are there to support her and help her. Hold her when she needs it and listen to her talk.

ABDELLAH TAIA

“Salvation Army” by Abdellah Taia is not  complicated on the surface. It tells the story of a young gay Moroccan boy who grows up in large family and later comes to Europe in the pursuit of sexual and intellectual freedom. When his friend does not show up at the airport in Geneva to pick him up, he is forced to seek shelter at the Salvation Army. It is not your average coming of age story.  Taia puts together an amazingly sobering story about growing up in a culture in which your freedom to make choices is not considered. He is in love with his brother and has erotic fantasies about him and the brother doesn’t seem to notice. The fact of having eleven siblings can leave anyone feeling lost in their own family, but Taia retains a distinct personality through and through. He gets mixed up with Swiss sex tourists — one who helps him achieve his dreams of leaving Morocco to study further.

Whether he is writing about North Africa or Western Europe, Taia seems to have found a way to put things in perspective — at least for himself. He finds North African lovers be warm, passionate and full of love for life. On the other hand, his Western European affairs tend to leave him yearning for more. And while he finds laughter and the exotic bliss of life in his family, it is Western Europe where yearns to find the peace and happiness one finds in freedom.

Taia’s autobiographical novel is an engaging read.

STEPHEN McCAULEY

Richard, discovering that Conrad, his partner of eight years, is seeing another man. He can’t get very outraged, however, because he’s been carrying on an affair with a closeted married man, Benjamin. Richard and Benjamin even have their own apartment. Richard is living a life of non-stop lies.

There are some wonderfully funny lines in this book but it is not McCauley’s finest novel. Worth a look.

Robyn Harding

Love the title, H S Horror Story. The narrator , Louise, is on the periphery of the in group because she is friends with Sienna who is at home with these girls. Of course they have a major falling out. Sienna’s mom has sex with Louise’s father. Who is too blame for the wrecking of two homes. Louise’s mom sees this as an opportunity to pull her life together and soon she is moving on closing the door on the previous relationship with the dad. One interesting twist is that Louise knows that Sienna’s hot, cute new boyfriend is having sex with her gay friend.

Sex Maniacs brings up many issues. A good read.

ANTHONY BIDULKA

Bidulka’s mysteries alway take place in exotic locals as well as at Saskatoon the private dick’s home. Sheesha is no exception; it is set in the Middle East, speifically Dubai. When Saskatoon man is searching for antique carpets, turns up dead in a Dubai souk (market), Quant is hired to discover what happened. The title Sheesha refers to smoking with a houka (water pipe).

I get a kick out of this series, a gay private eye from Saskatoon, my home town. But Sheesha is not his best work. Fun but disappointing.

FREDERIC MITTERAND

Mitterand is known in France as a TV personality and the nephew of the former President Francois Mitterand. The book opens with the author’s adoption  (however he shockingly uses the word “bought”) of a young Moroccan boy and ends with the burial of one of his former lovers. The memoir  decries describes his early relationships first of housekeepers and nannies and later friends. The book is well written but an overloading of uninteresting and unimportant facts bring the book down. I needed to skim far too much.

He also describes his experience in thed light districts of Bangkok and Jakarta. This brought him political termoil in France when he was the Mister of Culture.

Not highly recommended but a good skim.

MATTHEW RETTENMUND

Would have been better named Hustler Culture. What happens when a hustler falls in love. The narrator is a fussy prostitute; fussy because he is very selective about his “dates”. He also has two room mates. Joe lusts after him. He lusts for Andrew. Andrew  is interested in the narrator but doesn’t like the hustling. But selling his body is all that he knows.

Boy has many funny parts, especially the “sexual index” at the back of the book.

LEV RAPHAEL

I found My Germany great at some points and disappointing at others; uneven at best. The first section describes the life of a the author as a boy with parents who survived the holocaust and the stories of his parents. And how they all lived ” in the shadow of the holocaust. Wonderful. At an early age, he inherited his parents’ rejection of all things German. “We were different from other American children, with no grandparents and hardly any other relatives, no old furniture in the attic and no heirlooms from the past. There was, in effect, a personal Berlin Wall in our house, and what was on the other side was dangerous, rebarbative, perpetually off limits.” Lev knew he was Jewish but learned from his parents to dislike Jews and Judaism. His family did not attend synagogue or do family rituals. “His father felt contempt for these America Jews. My mother for the Yiddish spoken [in America]. They lived in the shadow of both the Hoocaust and Germany. “We lived in their shadow far more than was typical for immigrant children. Therir lives were monumental and – because not entirely known – mysterious. Our lives were insignificant. Nothing we suffered or accomplished could match their having survived”

The second part deals with his interactions with other Jews and his coming to terms with being gay.”How to children of holocaust survivors find meaning in their parents’ lives? What is the role of gays and lesbians in American Jewish life? This section is also captivating.

It is part three when he goes to Germany to discover his roots while doing readings, that the memoir begins to drag. Some of what I disliked was the bragging; several times he writes how he was a pioneer in writing about children of holocaust survivors and gay Jews. He does come to terms with his roots: “Whatever Germany is today, it’s not the country that persecuted my parents — and I’m not them. Likewise, their Germany isn’t my Germany. I suppose it never was.”

I loved the photographs of his family. A good read but needs skimming.

DAVID LEAVITT

Europe between world wars was watching the surge of fascism grow in both Germany and Spain where a fascist rebellion, led by Franco, was fighting to over throw the democratic government. The title refers to England’s hands off policy for Spain. Meanwhile thousands of young people from Europe and North America were volunteering to fight Franco’s fascists.

Brian is a upper class young man who believes that he is not really gay but having fun until it is time to settle down and marry. His lover, Edward, a working class young man, quietly accepts his homosexuality. When Edward discovers that Brian has been having an affair with Philippa, and is planning to marry her he flees Brian’s room and volunteers to fight in Spain.

I enjoyed the historical parts of the story as well as the love story. Well worth the read.

DANIEL ALLEN COX

A hustler in New York. This book reminds me of Just Kids. Mapplethorpe was a hustler at times he needed money, of course before he became successful.

Shuck is explicit. If that bothers you give the book a miss. Other wise it is an interesting but ultimately sad story.

PATTI SMITH

AKA: Portrait of the Artists As A Young Couple

If you like reading about art, artists and the sixties this book is for you. I hadn’t realized that Patti Smith was an author and visual artist as well as her career in music. Smith and the celebrated photographer, Robert Mapplethorpe,  were a young couple exploring life, love and art in New York. They were “roommates, soul mates, friends, lovers and muses.”  “We gathered our colored pencils and sheets of paper and drew like wild, feral children into the night, until, exhausted, we fell into bed.” Smith’s supportive family is the opposite of Mapplethorpe’s. Taking Smith to meet his parents, “His father barely looked at me, and said nothing to Robert except, “You should cut your hair. You look like a girl.” When Smith met Allen Ginsberg the beat poet he bought her a sandwich then asked, “Are you a girl? I took you for a very pretty boy.” He let her keep the sandwich.

“Robert took areas of dark human consent and made them into art. He invested the homosexual with grandeur, masculinity, and enviable nobility. He created a presence that was wholly male without sacrificing feminine grace. He sought to elevate aspects of male experience, to imbue homosexuality with mysticism.”

Thankfully pictures are sprinkled through the book; many of them Mapplethorpe’s.

A great book depicting art and life in an interest time in history.

CHRISTOPHER BRAM

AKA: A Gay Republican is an Oxymoron

Ralph is an assistant manager of a bookstore. He met Bill on-line in a gay chat room. They decide to meet F2F (face to face) and start a relationship. They couldn’t be more opposite of each other. Bill is a right wing, closeted Republican and author of a book slamming Hillary Clinton and women in general. Ralph is a open and out gay man; his best friend is a speech writer for an out spoken Democratic senator. After Bill comes out on national TV defending his controversial book, he is killed. Police  think that a hustler robbed and murdered him. When Ralph goes to police thinking that he had information that could help them find the killer, he is arrested for the murder.

The story has two surprise endings. An OK read.

DEBORAH RUDACILLE

I find gender a fascinating topic. I remember being blown a way by Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinburg. It is about a transgender person who had trouble with forms that asked to check either Male or Female when neither one was right. Riddle is a series of essays, history and interviews with transgender people. It contains many sad stories and many success stories of the happiness that transitioning from one gender to another can bring. A big question is what bathroom do you use? Transgender people are now saying that no surgery should be done until the individuals are of the age to express their feelings.

“I remember them removing my penis, reducing to the size of a normal clitorus. The doctors basically lied to my parents to get them to allow the plastic surgery and administer hormones at puberty. Counseling sessions were more like brain washing, trying to convince me that I was a normal little girl.”

“Even though transgenders had start the Stonewall riots, we were not welcome in the fight for gay and lesbian rights.”

An interesting idea is that the rate of gender dysphoria is increasing because of endocrine-disrupting chemicals in the environment. It is happening to animals as well as people. Estrogen or estrogen like compounds are found in many plastics.

I can’t say that I read the entire book but most of it. It was a great skim.

MICHEL TREMBLAY

What a wonderful volume of memories. Tremblay takes through his childhood describing how much reading meant to him. Most of his work is autobiographical but this is definitely a memoir of real events and thoughts. He tells about entertaining his friends with alternate endings to Snow White having read the Brothers Grimm. When his teacher finds out that he has been reading Victor Hugo they immediately send him across the street to confess his sins. Hearing that there is a novel about a homosexual in Quebec, A Storm Over My Body, he tries repeatedly to sign it out of the public library, which was his home away from home. Finally an honest librarian informs his that, “It’s alway out, as you say, for men under twenty-one. On managements orders. But the best story is the publishing of his first book, a collection of fantasy stories, Stories for Late Night Drinkers.”

This is a must read for people who love reading. Tremblay also wrote Bambi and Me about the movies that affected his life and imagination.

CHRISTOPHER BRAUM

Gay couple Zack and Daniel have been together for twenty-one years. At this time their relationship is completely asexual however they have an open relationship. Zack, a psychiatrist is not interested in sex at all but Daniel a frustrated artist who teaches art in a college, does go out to find partners for sex. Enter Abbass Rohani artist in residence and his wife Elena. He is Iranian; she is Russian. Their relationship is mostly asexual with Abbass looking for release from both men and women. Daniel is fascinated by Abbass’ art and sexuality and they start an affair. Abbass is a completely self absorbed and treats everyone around him like dirt. The situation changes enormously when Hassan, Abbass’ older brother and a government official in Iran, comes for a visit. When he leaves the FBI get involved. All this takes place in 2003, on the eve of the war in Iraq.

Exiles has some interesting juxtaposition, contrasting the two sexless marriages and synthesizing into an affair between the two men. Much of the end of the book is people fighting and arguing. It get tiresome.

MICHAEL THOMAS FORD

Some of the essays in this book are , laugh aloud funny. Ford writes a column for some newspapers and this book is a collection of these essays. The funniest story tells about his trepidation about going to a dyke dance with some of his friends. Will they even let him in? Will some of the women be upset to see a man at the dance? When he does go so many dykes stop to welcome him his friends complain that he is meeting more women than they are. It is a good light read.