Review: An emotionally lucid storyteller...
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 08 10, 2013
I just finished this book less than 20 minutes ago, having read it in one sitting.First I feel compelled to say, before anything else, that this book would have been even more emotionally galvanizing had it received the ministrations of a competent editor.  There were some awkwardly constructed sentences, the use of words that were clanging and self-conscious, as well as words that just made no sense in the context but which were not edited to congruence (I assume because spell-check won't catch words that are correctly spelled but incorrect in the context.)  Also, at least 30 times, on pages dense with dialogue, paragraph breaks appeared in the middle of a sentence.  Unfortunately, these are all major distractions, for me, from the flow of a gorgeous narrative.Normally I would have given this book 2 stars because of the above, but I enjoyed this story (if not the book) so much that it is one of my fondest hopes, sitting at my desk at this moment, that this author will write a sequel to this story and engage a gifted editor.  4 stars is my (humble) way of encouraging an emotionally gifted story teller to grapple with the technical knots that are entailed in rendering his "vision" in the unencumbered and lucid way I suspect he renders his photographs; which, by the way I looked up half way through reading the book. The voice of the narrator is authentic, generous and emotionally articulate.  I found the ending refreshing.  It felt that much more romantic for the fact that it was NOT too tidily gratifying.  I think in this genre it can be too easily forgotten that loss and longing are the mulch of true romance.I would have loved the book even had he not given us the last little twist in the epilogue.  Ended up stashing it in my Kindle file: "Gay Romance-Cut Above."