Ready To Catch Him Should He Fall - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1781259313 ISBN 13: 9781781259313

Publisher: Serpent's Tail, 2017

Synopsis

It is 3 a.m. in The City, and in a dark corner of The Bar, two lovers collide in the beginnings of a passionate and violent affair. Boy: nineteen, beautiful, ready for anyone to take him home, and 'O': the Older Man, cynical, unpredictable, and at the mercy of his personal demons. Their romance is orchestrated and observed by the owner of The Bar, Madame, who looks after her boys and ensures that their haven remains inviolate. At once a joyful celebration of homosexual love and culture, and a devastating evocation of the homophobic climate which stemmed from the 80s AIDS crisis, Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall offers a decisively contemporary recasting of the traditional love story. First published in 1990 and immediately acclaimed as the work of a bold new voice in English fiction, Neil Bartlett's powerful debut continues to shine with an ageless wisdom and wit.

About this title

About the Author

Neil Bartlett was born in 1958. His first book was the ground-breaking queer study of Oscar Wilde, Who Was That Man?, published in 1988, and his other novels are Mr Clive and Mr Page (1996), Skin Lane (2007) and The Disappearance Boy (2014). His fiction has been shortlisted for the Costa and Whitbread Awards, and in 2014 he was nominated as Stonewall Author of the Year. In 2000 he was awarded an OBE for his work in the theatre as a director and playwright. You can find out more about Neil's current work, and contact him, at www.neil-bartlett.com

From Kirkus Reviews

An erotic fable, chockablock with literary allusion, about a homosexual subculture obsessed with a young man and his older lover. British writer Bartlett's fable--by turns graphic and romantic--traces the growth of the community from narcissism to tragedy and an apprehension of mortality. The narrator--the voice of the subculture--writes from a nameless city about the affair and eventual ``marriage'' of Boy and O, his older lover. The action centers on The Bar, run by Madame, a sort of earth mother protector. When the Boy arrives at The Bar, it's a great event to the narrator and his group, transforming their existence. The Boy, with his black shoes and shoebox full of letters from ``Father,'' would ``go home with anyone really.'' He's initiated by Miss Public House, who teaches him the ``repertoires of what you could and couldn't do....'' O was always at Madame's right hand, though never intimate with her. ``By sheer force of will power,'' Mother and the group try to push O and the Boy (``our two greatest beauties'') together. Finally, they become lovers, ``the kind of wanting which extends beyond the night into the day.'' Against a backdrop of gay-bashing in the vicinity, O and the Boy carry on their courtship, with O indulging various ``nocturnal speeches,'' before they announce their engagement, have a great costume party, and marry. This Family then takes sick ``Father'' home, and the Boy tends him through the stages of his illness until he becomes aphasic and dies, whereupon The Bar shuts for the seven days of the Family's mourning, and Madame (now Mother) leaves. But O ``will always be handsome. And Boy will always be beautiful, I think.'' This one survives some first-novel tics--mostly self-conscious literariness and cutesiness--to succeed as a celebration of homosexual love. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Serpent's Tail
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1781259313
• ISBN 13: 9781781259313
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 314