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Title: Boys of Life by Paul Elliott Russell ISBN: 0-452-26837-0 Publisher: Plume Pub. Date: August, 1992 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.92 (12 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: what kind of love?
Comment: another sensational, provoking novel by Mr.Paul Russel. As usual, I have been enthralled by the beautiful style and the lyrical prose. I have cried while reading the book for the many resonances with my own life: the love denied, the emptiness of married life, the sadness of a gay man deeply in love living a one-sided relationship. What is redemption for Tony Blair? Getting married to a nice girl and go against his own homosexual nature. Isn't going against your nature a violence? His relationship with Carlos is a violent one, all the world surrounding Carlos is made of violence and Tony is trying to save himself, but what is he going to find once he is out of it all? An incredible tragical quest for identity and for love. A disturbing novel that tries to demonstrate with success that sex, unfortunately, is not always an act of love, but can sometimes be the quintessence of violence.
Rating: 1
Summary: TERRIBLE BOOK, NOT UP TO A COMING STORM
Comment: Boys of Life is both preposterous and perverted. After a lot of thought I think those two words really capture it. The brilliant writing of Paul Russel (as seen in A Coming Storm) is there in part but it is overwhelmed by the bizarre story. There is a role for the artist to turn over the rock and expose the seamy, real side of life. But this isn't the underside of the rock, it is a collection of weird fantasies that are so off the scale it is hard to call them even fringe. 16 year olds fisting, eating feces, genital mutilation, voluntarily fisting to the extent of mortal injuries. And then having a completely graphic film of this showing in arts theatres. This stuff is ridiculous. But big deal, there are lots of bad books in the world. What is reprehensible here is the Booklist quote on the cover claiming this is the great novel of gay experience --- that is a bizarre claim and Russel should have had the sense to not use it on the cover. Maybe some wacky hate group would claim it reflects the gay experience but to gay people this is a disservice.
Rating: 4
Summary: Impressive book, yet low quality?
Comment: Yesterday I finished reading this book and it leaves me with mixed feelings about it. On the one hand the book seems to be structured a bit clumsy. Sometimes it is a little too chaotic, while at other times it is too predictable. The author tried to much to write a complicated thought-through structure, while he misses the kind of genius some authors have when doing this. The book has a certain soap-level instead of being some kind of high-level classic. And the author tries too hard to make it a too well composed book, resulting in a too complicated and chaotic structure. He did the same in The Coming Storm, but to a slightly better effect.
However, I loved reading the book. So it's not impressive on the side of composition, but it is on the side of how he describes those peoples feelings and thoughts. How the story of those four intermingling lives gradually gets clear. The backcover is fully right when it uses words like 'preciousness and unpredictability, power and illogic'. The book gives me a melancholic feeling - the kind of feeling I like and the reason I read this kind of books. It is not just like a soap - the way the author describes relationships and the accompanying feelings are, in my opinion, close to brilliant. (Or, would it be that the way he describes human relationships is just close to how I think of it - in the sense that the book is not brilliant, but the author's ideas coincidentely close to mine - well, that you of course have to judge for yourself.)
So. Not a classic, but not a soap either. Not a must to read, but neither a 'one-in-a-dozen' kind of book.
I'm impressed, at least.
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Title: Sea of Tranquillity by Paul Russell ISBN: 0312303726 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: 25 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Coming Storm by Paul Russell ISBN: 0312263031 Publisher: Stonewall Inn Editions Pub. Date: 09 September, 2000 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: War Against the Animals: A Novel by Paul Russell ISBN: 0312209355 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: 27 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Salt Point by Paul Russell ISBN: 031226769X Publisher: Stonewall Inn Editions Pub. Date: 09 September, 2000 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Boy in the Lake by Eric Swanson ISBN: 0312262973 Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin Pub. Date: 05 May, 2000 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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