Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall (Five Star Paperback)

by Neil Bartlett

Paperback, 1998

Status

Available

Call number

PR6052.A7543 R43

Genres

Collections

Your library, University of Pittsburgh

Publication

Serpent's Tail (1998), Paperback, 320 pages

Description

At three in the morning, to the sound of slow music on the piano, in the darkest corner of the best bar in the city, two lovers fall into each others arms... one is older and wiser: one is just nineteen. Then follow the rites and ceremonies of a love affair and a happy marriage. From the kisses of courtship to the reading of the banns; from the wedding to the lovemaking to the moment when the first child is cradled in the loving parents' arms, everything in this story is in its proper place. Except that this marriage is a marriage between two men. Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall recasts earlier twentieth century fiction into a decisively contemporary account of how men in love might imagine their lives.

User reviews

LibraryThing member ocgreg34

One evening, a young man wandering around the city, in search of something but just what he doesn't yet know, happens upon a nightclub known as The Bar. The all-male clientele all agree that he is the most handsome man they've seen in a while, and because he's young, they simply call him Boy. The

weeks pass with Boy becoming a regular patron, going home with a different man each night until Mother, the owner of the bar, guides him, teaches hm what he needs to know about finding his own identity in the sea of men. Mother also quietly guides him toward another bar patron, Older Man, otherwise known only as "O". As their relationship blossoms into courtship and marriage, mysterious letters from a man known to Boy as "Father" begin to slowly work their way between the the two.

I'm of two minds about this novel. I did not like Boy or O for the first two thirds of the book. Boy slept with anything that moved and was indifferent to the patrons of The Bar. That stopped once he met O, but even their relationship at the start was not easy to understand for me. It read as if O were abusive and Boy fell into a pattern of acceptance, as if that was how the gay world worked. The patrons of The Bar seemed to agree with him and did not bat an eye when Boy walked in with new bruises. As for the telling of the tale, I constantly questioned the narrator, who was supposedly a bar patron but knew more information and specific details about O and Boy's relationship than a mere patron should.

The last third of the book, though, brought a change to Boy. He became stronger, took charge and made O stand back to view him in a new light. This version of Boy -- more mature, more adult -- was the change that I needed and hoped for. I just had to wade through quite a bit of strangeness to get there.

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LibraryThing member dale01

Very strange.

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