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lsparrow's review
4.0
I loved the premise of this book a collection of responses to old personal ad letters. A personal queer history in these responses
smalltownbookmom's review
4.0
A really personal memoir from Canadian writer Brian Francis about his experiences coming of age as a young fat small town Ontario boy. I really enjoyed the unusual format of this memoir, told in a series of fictional letters he writes to the men who responded to his personal ad from 1992. This was an eye-opening look at what life was like for gay men before grinder and when so few felt free to be open and trying to make connections was far from easy. Highly recommended and great on audio read by the author!
ellenmc07's review
4.0
A solid 4 stars for a really interesting concept. The responses were honest, sometimes brutally so. And I am not ashamed to say, it made me cry. Also to really think about the positions we hold throughout our lifetimes. A quirky read with tons of heart.
justabean_reads's review against another edition
funny
reflective
medium-paced
3.0
In 1993 ("For any Gen Zs reading the book, that was the year we invented fire"), the author placed a personal ad in the paper, got a few dozen responses, answered about half of them at the time, and now is looking at the other half, and wondering "what if."
I'm a little bit mixed on this book, as I feel like the format of a memoir in letter replies worked some of the time, and left me going "Why is this?" the rest of it. I was maybe spoiled by Ivan Coyote's Care Of... which nailed this format so perfectly nothing can compare, but I did wish the responses seemed more personalised to the letters in places, and less like the letters were prompts or jumping off points for what Francis wanted to talk about anyway.
Probably four or five of the fourteen letters really landed for me, a couple I didn't see the point of, and the majority were fine but not great. When it worked, it was such a clear and compassionate look at being gay in the '90s, especially not being in or near a major city, dealing with homophobia, with femmephobia, with AIDS, with being in the closet, with how physically dangerous the dating scene could be. I felt like it was at its best when it was on the theme of missed connections, and how the narrowed options of the early '90s made those connections so much more difficult to make. I think it's hard to understand what the '90s felt like if you weren't there, and I appreciate a first hand account that lays it out so clearly.
So, decent for the queer history aspect, and a little vague and undirected for the rest of the book. And, honestly, why are gay men so interested in stories about poo? I've never figured it out.
I'm a little bit mixed on this book, as I feel like the format of a memoir in letter replies worked some of the time, and left me going "Why is this?" the rest of it. I was maybe spoiled by Ivan Coyote's Care Of... which nailed this format so perfectly nothing can compare, but I did wish the responses seemed more personalised to the letters in places, and less like the letters were prompts or jumping off points for what Francis wanted to talk about anyway.
Probably four or five of the fourteen letters really landed for me, a couple I didn't see the point of, and the majority were fine but not great. When it worked, it was such a clear and compassionate look at being gay in the '90s, especially not being in or near a major city, dealing with homophobia, with femmephobia, with AIDS, with being in the closet, with how physically dangerous the dating scene could be. I felt like it was at its best when it was on the theme of missed connections, and how the narrowed options of the early '90s made those connections so much more difficult to make. I think it's hard to understand what the '90s felt like if you weren't there, and I appreciate a first hand account that lays it out so clearly.
So, decent for the queer history aspect, and a little vague and undirected for the rest of the book. And, honestly, why are gay men so interested in stories about poo? I've never figured it out.
jonbot666's review
5.0
I am a little younger than the author but this book resonated. Being out and proud is an accomplishment but the path can be lonely. The structure of the book is phenomenal and parts of it had me in tears. As a writer myself, the passages referring to the struggle to even decide if your story is worthy rang very true.
storytold's review against another edition
4.0
3.5 stars rounded up. Structuring a memoir around letters seemed like a wonderful idea, and a wonderful idea it was. In execution, it came off more like a series of essays, and I liked the book better when I took each of the 14 chapters as its own being rather than as contributing to a central narrative (though it did succeed as a central narrative in respects).
Brian Francis is in his early 50s as he writes, reflecting on his life growing up as a gay man who came out in Canada in the 1990s. The thing I loved best about this memoir was the perspective it offered on the previous (to me) generation of queer society. The fact that the memoir is built around the author's placement of a coded personal ad in the newspaper already sets the stage for what's not familiar to my generation: we have apps, where you can filter by orientation. Brian had classifieds.
The author reflects on these changes, particularly in an essay where he reflects on a reply sent to him by a retiree—Brian being a college student at the time—where Brian speculates on his own previous generation. The letter writer stood out by specifying he was HIV-negative; Brian reflects that, though HIV was very much a going concern in the '90s, there were more tools and awareness (in Canada) available by that time so that it felt like a different kind of threat than it would have been to the generation before. The author also reflects, attached to this, on how his gay nephew had something Brian himself didn't: an out gay uncle, a role model in the family.
These generational musings were my favourite material in the memoir, in part because the memoir itself is arguably a testament to what was possible for Brian's generation that was much less possible for the generation before. That's what makes this memoir so valuable: these are our forebears. They laid the groundwork for us. Someday we will be forebears, too, and it'll be us passing on tales of our generation. I am glad to know and understand Canadian queer history better for having read this, and I'd recommend it to anyone who cares about same.
That said, the book as a unit didn't always work for me. As mentioned, it worked better as essays than memoir in places. I enjoyed the hell out of the first and last thirds, and I especially enjoyed the last essay, which departed from the mold and gave us the author's two most important "gay" memories he wanted to instruct his younger self to look forward to. The middle of the book loses some of this momentum and energy, and—while reflection on the author's parents is understandable in a memoir—this sometimes felt navel-gazey in a way that didn't always feel relevant or very compelling to read.
The way the essays didn't follow a single narrative timeline meant it took until getting to the end to feel like the puzzle pieces came together to form a picture, but the book ends on a wonderful hopeful note, and I won't soon forget what I learned from reading this. This relatively quick and easy read is well worth picking up.
Thank you to NetGalley and McLelland & Stewart/Penguin Random House for the ARC.
Brian Francis is in his early 50s as he writes, reflecting on his life growing up as a gay man who came out in Canada in the 1990s. The thing I loved best about this memoir was the perspective it offered on the previous (to me) generation of queer society. The fact that the memoir is built around the author's placement of a coded personal ad in the newspaper already sets the stage for what's not familiar to my generation: we have apps, where you can filter by orientation. Brian had classifieds.
The author reflects on these changes, particularly in an essay where he reflects on a reply sent to him by a retiree—Brian being a college student at the time—where Brian speculates on his own previous generation. The letter writer stood out by specifying he was HIV-negative; Brian reflects that, though HIV was very much a going concern in the '90s, there were more tools and awareness (in Canada) available by that time so that it felt like a different kind of threat than it would have been to the generation before. The author also reflects, attached to this, on how his gay nephew had something Brian himself didn't: an out gay uncle, a role model in the family.
These generational musings were my favourite material in the memoir, in part because the memoir itself is arguably a testament to what was possible for Brian's generation that was much less possible for the generation before. That's what makes this memoir so valuable: these are our forebears. They laid the groundwork for us. Someday we will be forebears, too, and it'll be us passing on tales of our generation. I am glad to know and understand Canadian queer history better for having read this, and I'd recommend it to anyone who cares about same.
That said, the book as a unit didn't always work for me. As mentioned, it worked better as essays than memoir in places. I enjoyed the hell out of the first and last thirds, and I especially enjoyed the last essay, which departed from the mold and gave us the author's two most important "gay" memories he wanted to instruct his younger self to look forward to. The middle of the book loses some of this momentum and energy, and—while reflection on the author's parents is understandable in a memoir—this sometimes felt navel-gazey in a way that didn't always feel relevant or very compelling to read.
The way the essays didn't follow a single narrative timeline meant it took until getting to the end to feel like the puzzle pieces came together to form a picture, but the book ends on a wonderful hopeful note, and I won't soon forget what I learned from reading this. This relatively quick and easy read is well worth picking up.
Thank you to NetGalley and McLelland & Stewart/Penguin Random House for the ARC.