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Drew Payne

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  1. Drew Payne
    Sue Townsend rightly has the reputation as one of our finest comic novelists. Adrian Mole is one of the great comic characters and Sue Townsend did the most refreshing of things, she allowed him to age naturally. What we often forget is was what a good satirist she was too. This book steals the format from her other creation, Adrian Mole. This is the secret diary of Margaret Hilda Roberts, aged 14¼, living above her father’s grocer's shop in Grantham. This is Margaret Thatcher as a girl, long before she met and married Denis. Here Sue Townsend presents all the character tropes that Thatcher was renowned for – the workaholic, surviving on two hours’ sleep a night, the disdain for the working class, the distrust of the BBC and the inability to see the benefit of art – and she presents them in the character of a fourteen-year-old girl. This makes them seem absurd and very strange. Sue Townsend subtly questions these qualities, are they really positive characteristics? This book is also populated with caricatures of political figures from the same time. They are broad caricatures and often presented as other children in Margaret Hilda Roberts’s life, but the in-joke of recognising the real politicians just adds to the fun. This book is fun too, Sue Townsend’s wonderful sense of humour is plainly on display here and her jokes hit the mark (more than once I laughed out loud). The only problem with this book is that it’s so short and ended too soon. Find it here on Amazon
  2. Drew Payne
    Beryl Bainbridge, at her best, always had a dark view of life. It wasn’t just the unhappiness of life she wrote about so well but the pain and regret under that unhappiness. This novel is a fine example of the darkness she found in ordinary people’s lives. It is set in Liverpool in 1945. The war is finally turning and the city is awash with American GIs, but this is still the world of ration books, shortages and make do and mend. In this cold and austere world, naïve and immature Rita lives with her two aunts, Nellie and Margo. Her mother has died and her father is incapable of raising a daughter. Rita dreams of being a GI bride, her head was turned by the fantasy of the Hollywood films she escaped to in the local Picture House. At a party organised by a neighbour she meets her own GI. She rapidly falls in love with him, though she is far more in love with the idea of having her own GI than with the man himself. Her aunts, though, are certain that this young man is not suitable for their niece. This is not romantic fiction, it is a drama of downtrodden lives; Rita’s relationship with her GI has no breath of romance about it. The aunts’ lives are as dull and washed out as the wartime city around them. Nellie is the matronly character forced to be the head of the family. Margo is what was once called “blousy”, an unmarried middled-aged woman who behaves as if she was still young, though here she is no caricature; she is a woman who is desperate not to let life pass her by, even though it is rapidly doing so. The male characters are very much secondary characters here, but this is a novel about the women at the heart of it and it is no less a novel for that. This was the first Bainbridge novel I read. As a teenager, I was wary of literary fiction, finding it highbrow and inaccessible. With this novel, I was gripped by its dark opening and carried along by its dark plot. I was surprised that a novel with the plaudits this one had would also have such an interesting and readable plot. The characters were also all too recognisable. Rereading it recently, I found it had lost none of its dark appeal. This is Beryl Bainbridge at her height. Though a short novel, none of its pages are wasted and it still lingers in the memory long after I finished reading it. Find it on Amazon
  3. Drew Payne
    Anthologies can be interesting reads and, in the past, have introduced me to writers I might not have found in other ways. If it’s by one author then it can be an interesting introduction to an author’s work or else it is a way to see how an author handles writing short stories, which are different form from novel writing. If it’s an anthology of different writers then there is a chance to discover new authors. Unfortunately, this anthology did not provide any of this. I found this anthology so frustrating because none of the stories developed any of their themes. None of the stories had any character development or even led anywhere. After finishing each story, I was left with the feeling, “Was that it?” None reached any sort of resolution. Now, short stories are not novels, I don’t expect complete character story arcs or resolution of big themes, but they are stories and stories do need to take the reader somewhere. All the stories here left me feeling frustrated because they didn’t go anywhere. Some of the stories had an interesting premise but did not follow through on that premise, ending too soon or just not exploring that premise. One story, which illustrates my frustration with this anthology, was about two work colleagues sharing a car to a team-building event. They bought coffees; they argued over what music to play in the car; the car got a flat tyre; they waited for the breakdown van to arrive; they restarted their journey and it started to rain, but they didn’t reach their team-building event. The characters didn’t share anything, they didn’t get to know each other, they didn’t contact in any way; they were just the same at the beginning as they were at the end of the story, nothing had changed or been challenged. What was the point of this story? It was just a catalogue of their morning. For an anthology to have one story as frustrating and pointless as this is one thing, but to have a whole collection of stories like that is another thing. It had to be a conscious decision by the editor, but why would someone collect together a group of stories that all left the reader feeling so disappointed? I don’t know. My advice is not to waste your time with this anthology, I wish I hadn’t. Find it here on Amazon
  4. Drew Payne
    I'm only up to book seven, I have way too much to read (Having a Kindle has been my downfall), but have enjoyed every one so far. The eighties setting is so well painted and the character development, across the books, is so refreshing. They are such good books, and there are so few gay detectives left now.
  5. Drew Payne
    @TetRefine, YOU'RE A STAR!! Thank you for this, it is fascinating and really helpful.
  6. Drew Payne
    It is Hollywood, Los Angeles, 1943 and 19-year-old Nathan Reed’s life is turned upside down. Nathan, an innocent who has recently moved to Los Angeles, has everything changed when Hoyt Stubblefield ambles into his life. Within a week of their first meeting, in the Hollywood Boulevard bookshop where Nathan works, Nathan is living with Hoyt in Hoyt’s run-down upstairs apartment and sharing his bed. This marks the start of a whole new life for Nathan, an adventurous roller coaster ride of experiences. Hoyt, an artist and painter, introduces him to a whole new world of ideas, books, music, painting and the underground world that was gay life in 1940s Los Angeles. In return, Nathan is his pupil, model and lover. But this is no easy, romantic love story. Hoyt is as mysterious and secretive as he is handsome and charming, leading Nathan into an increasingly fraught and confusing life. Joseph Hansen is best known for his series of detective novels, featuring Dave Brandstetter (one of literature’s first openly gay detectives), but with Living Upstairs he again proves he was an accomplished novelist. The central relationship, between Nathan and Hoyt, is drawn with sensitivity and care. This is Nathan’s first relationship and Hansen perfectly captures that heady rush of lust and romance that so often makes up our first love affair—in this case it is also all on Nathan’s side. This novel is also full of other extremely well-drawn characters, the kind of characters that are not present in Hollywood films of the time or later. Hansen shows his ability to capture his characters in one or two well-drawn paragraphs, so from the moment we meet them we recognise the person. The atmosphere of this novel is evocative of a very different time and place. Not just period detail, though there is plenty of that, but this novel also has a deep feeling of its time and place. Hansen knew this world well, the fringe world of 1940s Hollywood, not just the underground homosexual world but also that of American communists and the poor on the fringes of tinsel town, and evokes it equally as well (the scene where Nathan and Hoyt, in a desperate bid to raise money, sell a pair of homoerotic paintings to a deeply closeted gay man is so telling). The novel is written in the present tense and solely from Nathan’s perspective. This style of writing is not to everyone’s taste, but I would suggest persevering with it because otherwise you might miss an excellent novel. This is Joseph Hansen at his very best and not to be passed over. Find it here on Amazon
  7. Drew Payne
    I think the fact that they got back together in 1991 and were together for the rest of Kramer's life is far more interesting then the plot of this book. I wish he had written about that relationship, with the insight he showed in The Normal Heart and The Destiny of Me. Thanks for the details.
  8. Drew Payne
    I first read it as a teenager and, though all the sex scenes made a "big" impression on me, I found I couldn't identify with any of the characters and the ending left me so down. It was just as negative as what the homophobes, back then, were telling me gay life would be. I sort-of re-read it for this review (well I skipped through it) and sadly found my memory of it wasn't wrong. I think Kramer always wanted to be one of the hot gays EVERYONE wanted to shag, and Heaven knows he wasn't. I also think he was a much better playwriter than he was anything else, he wrote two great plays (to my knowledge, because I haven't read his first one) and two great screenplays, but maybe that was because he HAD to work with other people to have them produced, the final draft wasn't just down to him. One interesting thing I found out, only just before he died, was that his partner for the second half of his life (long after this book was published) was the man who was the bases of the super gay hunk Dinky Adams, in this book, who the central character didn't end up with.
  9. Drew Payne
    Thank you for this. This all happened 19 years ago which has made it easy to write this, what made it difficult to write was that I didn't know where to start it and what to do with it when I'd written it. I wrote an essay about my mother in the week between her death and her funeral, but I never wrote anything about my father. I always felt awkward about not having written about him. If I had written it, what would I have done with it? The piece about my mother sat unused on my computer for years and years. Then I started this blog. When I posted the piece about my mother, I got such good feedback that I knew I had to write about my father too. With him there was so much to write about. I wanted to write about what grief did to him, how strange and useless I felt because I'm a nurse and yet there wasn't anything clinical for me to do, that really dumb thing the vicar of my sister's church said and what my father was waiting for. When I remembered how quiet his room was at the hospice, and I remembered the few sounds in it, then I had my way into writing this essay. I wrote it in one afternoon. I thought it was egotistical to write about myself, thinking that I was so important and interesting that people would want to read about me, which isn't the case. I'm not that interesting and I'm certainly not important. But what I found out was that people have been through the same things as me, and that recognition speaks to them. That's so humbling. But I only write about things that I've come to terms with, that no longer hurt me. There are still so many things that I won't write about because they still generate too many emotions for me. My father and I had a complicated relationship. Since his death I've had plenty of time to think about it. I've also been able to talk with Martin, my husband, and my brother, who had a very different relationship with him, about my father. This has all helped me to understand so much about what happened. That has helped so much. Life can be so complicated.
  10. Drew Payne
    The events here took place 19 years ago and yet I can remember it like it was yesterday, sitting there in that hot quiet room. I hate the attitude that says "you'll get over it", but I have found that I've accepted it and that adversaries and memories don't hurt as much, I've stopped constantly questioning myself that I should have done things differently. I can now enjoy the memories of my parents, good and bad.
  11. Drew Payne
    Thank you, it wasn't easy to write because I kept putting off doing it, but I also felt rather guilty for not doing so because I had written an essay about my mother but not about my father. So when I started this blog I set myself the deadline of writing this, of giving my father the essay I'd given my mother. My memories of my father are mixed but he was a complicated human being and had his faults as well as his virtues. I will be writing some essays about him and my mother, it is my way of keeping them alive and honoring their memories. On the surface they lead such simple and quiet lives, but once I started to look further their lives were anything but simple. They have already given me so much to write about.
  12. Drew Payne
    That is the perfect description. Here people are given everything they think they need to be "happy" and it is used as a cage to imprison them. This is a more subtly disturbing dystopia than 1984. I am so envious of you though, I never read anything as exciting as this and 1984 at school, we did "the classics".
  13. Drew Payne

    Twenty-Eight

    Drew Payne commented on Drew Payne's story chapter in Twenty-Eight

    Thanks for the feedback. There is so much more to Liam's story and I am enjoying writing his relationships with the other characters, especially as I know where they are heading, plus some characters can say what I believe and know. I just need to get on and write more, which has been so delayed by my stupid asthma. Plus I am going to bring back an old character for a bit of a cameo appearance.
  14. Drew Payne

    Twenty-Eight

    Drew Payne commented on Drew Payne's story chapter in Twenty-Eight

    Thanks for the feedback. Yes, Liam is worrying what people would think of him if they know all about him but he isn't blaming himself for Britney being shipped out of the hospital. He is moving forward, but slowly because he has had years of abuse and neglect to overcome, and no road is smooth and straight.
  15. Drew Payne
    The following two days felt calm on the ward, and he found himself relaxing back into it all. The ward was still running on its usual routine. He spent his days in the Education Centre, in his afternoons he met with Aiden or sat through the Group meetings, and in his free time, he hung-out with Chrissy and TJ. Chrissy made most of the conversation with TJ shooting his comments into whatever she was saying, but he enjoyed listening to them. They did involve him in their friendship and, though it
  16. Drew Payne
    I read this novel when it first came out in paperback, I think back in 1987, but it left such an impression on me. The son's sexuality causing such a drama within his family but it wasn't because of the usual theme of homophobic parents throwing him out of the home. At the end of last year, I set myself the project of reviewing as many of the books I've read as I can, and I've read a lot of them. I will checkout Christadora, by Tim Murphy. Posting these reviews, I've had lots of people recommending books to me. The only the problem is that I've a Kindle full of books I want to read too. So many books and so little time (!!).
  17. Drew Payne
    I wouldn't say Christie had a formula, though she had a lot of tricks she used. Her books are game between her and her reader, can the reader guess the murder before she reveals them (I learnt so much about plotting from her). Though The Sittaford Mystery is by no means is her best, it isn't as bad as The Mirror Cracked From Side to Side. It had a good premise but the execution of it was so poor, Miss Maple was kept away from all the action. Sayers doesn’t seem to being forgotten, not when all her books are still in print, not just e-books, and so many Golden Age fans still rave about her.
  18. Drew Payne
    I've read The Nine Tailors and it is certainly her best novel but I find so many problems with her books. I always found the biggest problem at the heart of her novels was Wimsey himself. Sayers was obviously very enamoured, if not in love, with him, but I've always found him such a weak character. He's stereotype of "aren't the aristocracy wonderful!" I just found her plots and characterisation so lacking. So often there was no mystery to who the murder was and so often their motivation was unrealistic, even pitiful. Her descriptive powers were one of the best of most Golden Age writers but for me it is plot and characters that make a book readable. So many people still say that Sayers is the best Golden Age writer and I cannot see why. My favourite crime writers do remain PD James, Ruth Rendell and Joseph Hanson, and I owe a debt to Agatha Christie for teaching me to plot. I know not everyone will like the same writers, if we did this world would be a horrible dystopia, but I just find Sayers so lacking.
  19. Drew Payne
    I was reading about the shelving of Australian religious discrimination bill last night and I did feel a sense of relief. It did look a really poisonous bill. I'd read of everything you said and it scared me. It's a horrible example to the right-wing pashing back against hard won equality. In Britain we are seeing a hard push back against attempts to make conversation therapy illegal, and our government is listening to them. Hard won equalities can be lost and I see so much pushing back, around the world. In America there is so much push back against many freedoms. I worry about this because, in the Western World, so many right-wing groups are in contact and are after the same things. If it’s successful in one country then we can expect to see attempts in other countries. The raise of populist politics bears this out. Our stories are so important, they show the direct effect of prejudice, and we need to keep telling them. When this essay happened, gay sex had been partly decriminalised 18 years before in England but still so little had changed. I worried about posting this essay, I worried it could get back to the people mentioned in it (even though I changed all their names), but all the feedback I've had has been so positive that I no longer worry about it. If they do read it, I now really wonder what they'd say. Thanks for your feedback, it has helped make up my mind. I will be writing and posting more essays about my coming out, I know I need to tell that story.
  20. Drew Payne
    Gary, Thank you for your comment, though I know it wasn't easy for you to live through that homophobic nightmare (which had changed little when I hit my teens), but your comment means a lot to me because it shows me it was right to post this essay. I worried before and after posting this, if I was doing the right thing. Your comment and a personal message I received, showed me it was the right thing. I've decided to write essays about those pivotal moments from my life, especially about my coming out journey. I don't want it to be a pity party but I do want to write about where I came from to get me to where I am now. Thanks for the feedback, it means a lot.
  21. Drew Payne

    Twenty-Seven

    Drew Payne commented on Drew Payne's story chapter in Twenty-Seven

    Liam is learning as he grows up. The first time he was confronted by a bully, Rhys Clarke, he'd fallen into that old school-child lie of don't tell the teachers, don't snitch, and that didn't end well. Here he's confronted by Britney and he tells the truth, eventually, which drops Britney in trouble and not him. And as a reward he starts to make friends. He's a teenager and he's growing up, he's too bright not to learn from events.
  22. Drew Payne

    Twenty-Seven

    Drew Payne commented on Drew Payne's story chapter in Twenty-Seven

    People have been telling Liam of the need to make friends and slowly he is realising why. Aiden is such a good and natural nurse, and here he shows it. I based him on someone I met a very long time ago. He was a mental health nurse and always knew exactly the right thing to say. I used to envy him that skill. (I do rather like Aiden)
  23. Drew Payne
    Suddenly he had someone at Nurton Cross who was interested in him, with whom he had made a connection. Aiden and Dr Sayeed both kept saying that he needed to make friends, but Britney was not a friend he wanted. She seemed to treat him as her own personal pet. She’d demand that he do things for her - fetch her this, or bring her that, or else he would have to listen to her as she complained and moaned in her latest monologue about how poorly treated she was by the whole world. Over the foll
  24. Drew Payne
    It is a double-edged sword, great inspiration but way too distracting. At the moment there is a very frustrated woman trying to exercise a large dog on the grass but the dog just wants to sniff at the grass, instead of chasing the ball the woman has brought.
  25. Drew Payne

    Twenty-Six

    Drew Payne commented on Drew Payne's story chapter in Twenty-Six

    Liam is faced with another bully, this one is more manipulative, but he is in a very different situation. There is hope at the end of the tunnel.
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