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the straight world dreams! Jon, Mike, Bill, Amy, Anna, and that’s just off the top of my head you all have a powerful reading experience ahead. And then check out the Seattle Public Library’s website for the author’s appearances around Seattle the first week of May, including a Book-It presentation of several scenes from the book with actors while the author is here. Anyone up for a field trip? Review: Stories for Boys by Gregory Martin (Hawthorne Books, $16.95, 9780983477587, October 2012 release) An urgent phone call from his 67-year-old mother in Spokane breaks the news to Gregory Martin that his father has attempted suicide. His two reasons for overdosing come as complete shocks he was abused for ten years from the age of four by his own father, and for all 39 years of his marriage he has resorted to anonymous sexual encounters with over one thousand men. Author Martin, in his forties, is a father of two boys himself, ages six and four. He’s filled with anger. He feels betrayed. How much should he tell his sons about why their beloved grandparents are getting a divorce? How much do you ever let children know about suicide? How much can they understand about lying, about living a secret life, about being gay? Martin’s mother, who no sooner gets her husband home from the hospital than she tells him to move out, is a high-powered female professional in academics and university administration, and her husband has followed her wherever her career led, making a hodgepodge employment record for himself as a 7th grade P.E. teacher, a travelling drug salesman, a real estate agent, a hardware salesman, a kitchen designer, and a speech pathologist in a nursing home. Except for living a sexual lie, he was the perfect husband and father. Now what? Martin doesn’t have an easy time wrestling with his father’s new sexual identity, and his provocative memoir about the shattering and healing of his family takes the unusual angle of admitting his own often righteous, judgmental, uncompassionate responses to his father’s confession. His determination to come to grips with his own intolerance and sense of betrayal is the heart of the book, and watching him find new ways to love the father he never completely knew becomes emotionally exhilarating. His memoir is studded with pure gem moments often involving his two sons, like seven-year-old Evan’s tearful vigil by the old replaced refrigerator waiting by the curb to be hauled away. According to Martin, “…in a good story a character has to want something badly, and this character cannot get what he wants… He gets something else.” Martin certainly gets something else, as his love for his father deepens. His memoir becomes profoundly touching as he takes himself to task, and over it all presides the spirit of his guiding light and inspiration, Walt Whitman, able to become sympathetic with any passing stranger, open to all, forgiving to all. Nick ************************************ Come join us any Wednesday, 6-7:15pm at Feel free to just show up, whether you’ve finished the book or not. Read the SGN interview with Nick about the club Read all about SASG, our hosts 2009 Breakfast with Scot Michael Downing Orange Are Not the Only Fruit Jeanette Winterson I Am Not Myself These Days John Kilmer-Purcell The City and the Pillar Gore Vidal The Price of Salt Patricia Highsmith Fun Home Alison Bechdel Queer William Burroughs A Fairly Honourable Defeat Iris Murdoch The Thief’s Journal Jean Genet Wild Dogs Helen Humphreys The Gifts of the Body Rebecca Brown Death in Venice Thomas Mann 2010 The Immoralist Andre Gide A Single Man Christopher Isherwood The Pure and the Impure Colette The Last of the Wine Mary Renault Satyricon Petronius Maurice E. M. Forster Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman Dog Years Mark Doty Portrait of the Addict as a Young Man Bill Clegg Confessions of a Mask Yukio Mishima Stuck Rubber Baby Howard Cruse My Father and Myself J. R. Ackerley 2011 Hindoo Holiday J. R. Ackerley The Line of Beauty Alan Hollinghurst Dry Augusten Burroughs We Think the World of You J. R. Ackerley Just Kids Patti Smith The Counterfeiters Andre Gide Union Atlantic Adam Haslett Teleny and Camille Jon Macy, adapted from Oscar Wilde and His Circle Moffie Andre Carl van der Merwe The Ladies Doris Grumbach 2012 The Stranger’s Child Alan Hollinghurst We the Animals Justin Torres Jack Holmes and His Friend Edmund White Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? Jeanette Winterson Are You My Mother? Alison Bechdel The Swimming-pool Library Alan Hollinghurst Mars Vs. Maple School Nick DiMartino Goodbye to Berlin Christopher Isherwood Christopher and His Kind Christopher Isherwood The Picture of Dorian Gray (uncensored) Oscar Wilde Mr. Fortune’s Maggot Sylvia Townsend Warner Changes: In A Little Gay Bar Nick DiMartino 2013 Becoming A Man Paul Monette Borrowed Time Paul Monette Heaven’s Coast Mark Doty The Gallery John Horne Burns Stories for Boys Gregory Martin ******************* http://faculty.washington.edu/swittet/Turkey/ http://faculty.washington.edu/swittet/France/ http://faculty.washington.edu/swittet/SGLBookClub/ |
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