Review: If this was the last m/m book I ever read, I would die happy.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 07 17, 2013
Il faut cultiver notre jardin. This is the theme of this book. We must take care of our own garden. This is from Voltaire's "Candide," which I read as a French major in college. And what does it mean - why has it stuck to me so strongly for 40 years? Because it is nothing less than the truth. More on this below...I loved this book. You must understand, I am Hilary Kent. Well, almost. Actually, I'm only 58, my big brother is Hilary Kent. But straight. And married. With kids. Sigh. OK, the POINT is, that my greatest sadness in the m/m genre world is the absolute rule that no one over 40 is allowed to be in love, or sexy. Once you're over 50, you're a pathetic old queer with no life and no value to a story except to be a joke or a victim. (Sorry, ladies, I blame you for this.)So, to repeat, I loved this book.Such a British book, just as Hilary is such a British man. I know plenty of American gay men his age, and none of them have that reticent, self-abnegating, gentle spirit that makes Hilary someone I loved instantly. And, in my case, identified with from the first page. But this also makes him very sad, to me.Hilary, at 65, was 21 when anti-sodomy laws were finally repealed in England in 1967. As a result, he has learned to live a gay life of such perfect discretion that he has given up on any idea of real happiness - he has settled, instead, for contentment. Alone his whole life, now retired to a little medieval tower house he inherited from a crackpot old cousin he didn't even know, he is content. But, like his crazy recluse cousin, Hilary has not cultivated his garden. He knows nothing about his garden or about the man who created it. Il n'a pas cultivé son jardin. He has not really lived his life. Sad, that.Into this quiet, controlled life pops Tom, twenty-three, a graduate student in medieval archaeology at the local uni. He is studying gardens, and in particular Hilary's Kent's garden - overgrown after half a century of neglect. Apparently, a possibly gay Anglican priest name Thaddeus of Kent planted the garden as a medicinal laboratory 400 years earlier. And Tom is all over it.And Tom is cute. And gay. And very out. He has lovely hands. (shiver) Hilary notices.Absolutely nothing of consequence happens in this book. But, if you're like me, you are caught up from the first page, because you, too, fall in love with Tom. But what could possibly happen between a sixty-five-year-old pensioner and a grad student 42 years younger? Read it and find out. If this was the last m/m book I ever read, I would die happy.