Geni Optns Book on Growg Up Gay and Disabled 1980s London - Variety

Contents:

• 13 VERY GAY AND VERY GOOD BOOKS YOU SHOULD READ THIS PRI MONTH
• THE BT GAY BOOKS TO ADD TO YOUR TBR LIST
• THE 10 BT GAY FANTASY BOOKS YOU SHOULD HAVE ALREADY READ BY NOW!

13 VERY GAY AND VERY GOOD BOOKS YOU SHOULD READ THIS PRI MONTH

Recently, Alan Hollghurst said the gay novel is ad.

"There was an urgency, a novelty to the whole thg," said the gay thor, who won the Man Booker Prize for The Le of Bety. Woods, a Lambda :Lerary Award nomee for her novel Thgs to Do When You're Goth the Country, says Baldw succeed at "blurrg the l of hero and villa and brgg the plexy of human nature to horrifyg foc." Maybe that's bee Baldw said the book isn't actually about beg gay. "Gvanni's Room is not really about homosexualy," said Baldw a 1980 terview about queer life.

THE BT GAY BOOKS TO ADD TO YOUR TBR LIST

Go Tell It on the Mounta, for example, is not about a church, and Gvanni is not really about homosexualy. SJ Sdu, thor of Marriage of a Thoand Li, lled , "One of the first Anglophone works to challenge the trope of the sad/suicidal gays who die at the end, this book gave a blueprt of what queer fictn uld look like."The Price of Salt's dizzygly erotilly charged prose also telegraphed her signature sense of an omo "menace" ( this se, the threat of beg ught or found out jt as the Red Sre h the Uned Stat).

Forster (A Passage to India, A Room Wh a View, Howards End) wrote the benchmark gay novel Mrice cir 1913, was published posthumoly 1971.In a lh tale of manners, posn, and sire, the tular character meets and falls for his classmate Clive while at Oxford. The pair embark on a two-year affair until Clive leav Mrice to marry a woman and live out his proscribed life as part of the land gentry, leavg Mrice shambl and seekg to cure his homosexualy.But Forster's novel do not end gay tragedy.

The thor of Night Drop, Marshall Thornton lled the novel "the origal gay romance." A note found on Forster's mancript for Mrice, which was disvered tucked a drawer, read "Publishable, but worth ?" Ismail Merchant and Jam Ivory adapted the novel to the big screen a geo film starrg Jam Wilby, Hugh Grant, and Rupert Grav.

THE 10 BT GAY FANTASY BOOKS YOU SHOULD HAVE ALREADY READ BY NOW!

Alan Hollghurst famoly qutned the future of the gay novel this year, which is strikg sce he's often viewed as helpg make queer books accsible to a mastream dience. Hollghurst set his pen on the sexual hypocrisi of homophobic policians, many of whom had their own discretns behd closed doors.

The book follows Nick Gut, a gay graduate stunt unofficially adopted by the fay of a schoolmate. The queer g-of-age novel about Jim Willard and his search for love was the first novel om a rpected wrer (Gore Vidal) to speak directly and sympathetilly about the gay experience an era when homosexualy was still very much taboo. The book is remembered today for this legacy as well as for var them -- Hollywood's glass closet, beg gay the ary, the poisono effects of homophobia on society -- that still reverberate today.

The only novel by the great Osr Wil may not be overtly gay, but there's plenty of gay subtext there for the reful rear - about as much gay subtext as a popular thor uld get away wh 1891.Dorian's iends Basil Hallward and Lord Henry Wotton exprs tense admiratn for his bety, and passag that show Basil's feelgs for Dorian as more clearly homoerotic were excised by an edor, acrdg to Nicholas Frankel, who eded an edn prentg Wil's origal text 2011.Even the text as origally published has referenc to Dorian's rptn of not only young women but young men: "There was that wretched boy the Guards who mted suici. Cy of Night, a 1963 novel by John Rechy, is a semal piece of fictn that follows the life of a gay htler New York Cy, Los Angel, New Orleans, and San Francis.