January 22, 1993

GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

Page 27

Entertainment

A modern-day fairy tale

Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall

by Neil Bartlett

Plume Books, $10.00 paper, 315 pages Reviewed by Eric Sellen

Neil Bartlett's Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall was published in Great Britain in 1990 and in hardcover in the United States in 1991. In late 1992, it became available in the U.S. in paperback and, hard or soft, it's a novel that should be on every gay man's reading list.

Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall, even (or especially) after a second reading, has been added to my most-favored bookshelf and thus joined my list of "favorite" or "top ten" gay novels. There it sits happily beside such classics as Armistead Maupin's much beloved West Coast Tales of the City series (1977-90), Ethan Mordden's East Coast "Tales From the City" trilogy (I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore, Buddies, and Everybody Loves You; 1985-88), Paul Monette's Halfway Home (1991), and Augustine GomezArcos's The Carnivorous Lamb (1975/ 1984).

Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall is something of a modern-day fairy-tale (all puns intended)--a kind of Cinderella story wherein two men find themselves unexpectedly able to fit perfectly together as a couple (foot in shoe, hand in glove). The two are in some ways mismatched: one older, one younger, one experienced and

the other not. But all obstacles are overcome under the wise and watchful eyes of their own fairy godmother, named simply and apply "Mother," who is the proprietress--or possibly the proprietor--of a local gay bar.

Visual images are important to Bartlett, not surprisingly, when we recall that he's a theater director, and they are also one of his strengths. Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall is filled with many marvelous images, both tangible and surreal, some explicitly erotic, others sensually (and oh so wonderfully!) veiled. With these images, the couple's romance is threaded into a worldcity filled with gay-bashing, homophobia, and a dreaded plague (the "A" word is not spelled out, ever). But these--along with questions of family support, rejection, and identity--become the very fabric of everyday life, as much to be cursed as to provide comfort, as familiar as a well known pothole or the dripping kitchen faucet. The city of these men's dreams and deeds, although never named, is loosely based on

London.

Some readers may have trouble "getting into" this book. The visual images and metaphors seem at first to be without much context. But keep reading and, like a bottle of good red wine allowed to breathe, you'll find the second half gaining depth and dimension. Don't hurry to find the happy ending, mixed with some sadness along the way. The way this story is told is as substantial as the story itself, if not more so. Taste slowly, savor lingeringly.

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