Review - It's a long story: A Novel About Beautiful Boys Doing Terrible Things to Each Other

James is a stereotypical gay party boy. He dropped out of college and works as a waiter to earn just enough to pay his share of the rent, buy the right clothes, and pay for drinks on his weekly nights out. He appears to drink too much when he’s out, and his love life seems to consist mostly of guys he picks up at the club or hookups found on the web.

One of those hookups is Dan, a nerdy heavyset guy that James nonetheless clicks with. The two end up seeing a lot of each other, but James has commitment issues and backs off if there’s any sign things might get serious. James’ main issue is AJ, the man he dropped out of college for and followed to Europe and back on a sexual adventure. AJ uses men and then tosses them aside, just like he did with James, only it seems AJ hasn’t quite forgotten his former lover either.

There’s actually a rather interesting story here. One which avoids most romance novel clichés and has some wicked plot twists. Unfortunately the story is well camouflaged behind some very lackluster writing, and further hampered by apparently not having had even a cursory edit or proofing. The main issue with the writing is that classic problem of “telling” versus “showing”. Events are generally described in a very basic way that isn’t very engaging. It’s mostly of the nature of “James did this. Then he went there and did that.” Occasionally we get a paragraph or two that shows the author can write well if he sets his mind to it, but most of the book is delivered in the literary equivalent of a dull monotone.

Adding to the perception of laziness is an annoying amount of repetition. Once the author comes up with an interesting turn of phrase, he seems to beat it to death. For example, saying two characters ate dinner, “and then had each other for dessert“ is cute enough the first time, but when it’s repeated three or for times in the space of a few pages you just have to roll your eyes. In at least a couple of cases, entire paragraphs have been copied and reused with only one or two words changed.

Lastly, there is also an issue with a large amount of extraneous information that doesn’t add to the story. We get a lot of dream-memories of Dan’s childhood. In itself, it’s not uninteresting, but in the context of the whole story it’s not tied in well enough to what Dan is presently feeling to really add anything. It doesn’t inform us about what he will do as the book unfolds. We also get a couple of pages about events thousands of years in the future, which has nothing at all to do with the story. It’s a complete digression that leaves you wondering what the hell the author was thinking.

It’s very disappointing when an author seems to have a good idea but just doesn’t make the effort to present it well. Just a little bit of editing would improve this book immensely.

The book is available from Amazon