[rating=4]
307 pages • Paradise Press • June 23, 2012 [PB]

Tim Bennett-Goodman finds Rod Shelton’s first novel fast-paced, picaresque romp which is funny, sexy and intriguing by turns.

“In this blackly-comic novel, high drama meets high camp and the reader is rewarded with raunchy gay sex amongst a bevy of beautiful boys, in every imaginable position, on almost every other page.”

[rating=4]
246 pages • Quartet • June 7, 2012 [PB]

Allan Massie’s Dark Summer in Bordeaux, the sequel to Death in Bordeaux, is a worthy successor.

“Massie evokes this increasingly unstable society exceptionally well and provides the reader with a real sense of the anxiety and insecurity that must have ruled the lives of all who lived in Pétain’s ‘French State’.”

45 Years of Legal Consensual Gay Sex … With A Few Reservations.

What was the 1967 Sexual Offences Act all about, and how effective was it as a piece of social legislation?

“The Act further restricted gay men by only sanctioning sex between two consenting adult males (i.e. over 21) in private. A threesome (or more-some) was a definite no-no, but even sex with non-participant/s present was an offence, as was consensual sex in an hotel or other ‘public’ place.”

[rating=4]
307 pages • Bloomsbury • May 10, 2012 [PB]

An endearing and thought-provoking tale of a forty year old man who joins the circus to become an aerialist.

“This novel moves by turns from the bleak and alienating to the humorous and life-affirming, with its message that, through all life’s adversities, struggle can overcome and bring its own rewards.”

[rating=5]
564 pages • Picador • May 24, 2012 [PB]

An historical, family saga; a monumental novel that is greater than Hollinghurst’s works to date.

“At the risk of sounding an irreverent note (and without wishing in any way to belittle Hollinghurst’s towering achievement) there is more than a fleeting suggestion of Brideshead Revisted-meets-Downton Abbey in The Stranger’s Child.”

Austerity Britain Comes to World Pride.

Keep calm and carry on, World Pride 2012 fell apart and Boris Johnson failed London one more time.

“Is it really worth jeopardising London’s international standing as a fun city to live, work and do business in for the sake of a reported measly £65,000, which probably amounts to little more than a bankers’ bonus-celebration dinner?”

[rating=4]
323 pages • Picador • May 7, 2010 [PB]

Tim Bennett-Goodman is gripped by this thriller set in the seamier side of Rome.

“The narrative maintains a breathtaking pace, making it utterly gripping reading. It is also a dark, dangerous, brooding, and (perhaps because of that) very sexy novel.”

[rating=5]
352 pages • Bloomsbury • April 12, 2012 [PB]

Sad and fatalistic, yet ultimately satisfying and strangely comforting, the tragic love story of Achilles and Patroclus is in Madeline Miller’s hands a life-affirming one.

“When the long-postponed and hoped-for moment arrives, just after Achilles’ sixteenth birthday, the release of tension is palpable. But one is also acutely aware that this is to be a fateful moment, and that the die, once cast, will irrevocably shape the rest of their lives.”

[rating=4]
233 pages • Accent Press • May 9, 2012 [HB]

Tim Bennett-Goodman is angered and moved by this between-the-wars tale of homosexuality and prejudice.

“All the Beauty of the Sun, whilst far from being a polemic, serves as a salutary warning not to judge those who went before us by contemporary standards.”

[rating=4]
72 Pages • Kiss and Tell Press • November 21, 2011 [PB]

Tim Bennett-Goodman finds Confessions of a Sex Addict: Part 1 by Michael Wynne to be an honest, philosophical book about a prolific gay male sexual adventurer.

“There is not a shred of reservation or reticence when it comes to minute observations of the sheer physicality of gay male sex – although there may be a tinge of regret, even guilt, about some of his perceived emotional shortcomings or failures of empathy on occasion.”