The plot of A Way of Love is slight in any real narrative sense: Bruce Quantock, middle-aged, a successful architect and an enviably well adjusted homosexual meets and is attracted to Philip Dill, a much much younger man. Philip is sufficiently mature to recognize what Bruce is looking for and sufficiently mature to recognize his own sexual propensities and, with Bruce, to yield to them without great compunction. At the same time, however, Philip is unable to accept the thought of himself as a homosexual, the idea that "other" homosexuals are people and violently rejects any concept of homosexuality as way of life." His abhorrence of being or becoming "one of those," his reluctance even to meet Bruce's friends or to accept Bruce's life as it may include or may have included any "of those" are, of course, in conflict with his own way of love. The series of situations which develop and prove this conflict constitute the novel.
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The characterizations of the minor characters who are presented essentially as a gallery of gay types that is to say "those"-are both amusing and excellently drawn. It is perhaps unfortunate that the two principals remain somewhat shadowy by contrast. It seems highly probable, however, that this, as a literary device. which Mr. Courage has adopted for reasons of his own, is quite intentional.
A Way of Love is worth reading if for no other reason than the ending alone which is neither "moral" and hence tragic nor yet sentimental and story-bookish. Reluctantly I say that any mature homosexual will recognize the ending as being all too real.
In a broad sense A Way of Love presents a problem in human behavior which is by no means confined to the homosexual. Entertaining and worthwhile reading for anyone.
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NOW OUT
The
KEVAL
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FIFTEEN LUSTY STORIES
by Harry Otis
Published by ONE Inc.
a racy trip around the world Saucy and sexy tales of homosexuals in the Orient and Latin America.
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