Best Gay Contemporary General Fiction: The Marrying Kind by Ken O'Neill
This novel is able to tell a serious story with a light mood. Adam and Steven are an happy, and privileged, couple: using Steven’s narrative voice, so it’s not that he is telling everything, the reader can, nevertheless, understand that probably Adam is the one with the money, old Mayflower pioneers’s money, and Steven is more or less a kept man. But there is no troubles between them, both Adam and Steven are young and handsome, in a nerdy, next door boy type maybe, but above all they are in love; they are not the party-boys, they have their nice Manhattan’s apartment, 2 kids (spoiled cats…) and good friends. Adam works as wedding planner, using all his wasp background to make every event a memorable one, and Steven is a columnist for a free Gay mag, that accidentally is managed by his former college boyfriend and currently best-friend. So, you see? No troubles.
Not until the day Adam starts to realize that he is planning fabulous wedding parties when he is not allowed, by the law, to marry. It’s not a sudden realization, it’s more like something intruding in his mind, and making him day-by-day uncomfortable and sad. Steven sees the change in Adam, and it worries him. This is what I liked of this couple, and why I consider this novel a very nice romance, the main characters are in tune with each other, they work like a perfect symphony.
I believe this novel is a perfect mix of romance, comedy and even activism. Through Steven’s voice, we listen to the ordinary troubles an apparently happy gay couple have to deal with. There is really nothing against them, they have money, parents and relatives’s support, a satisfying career, if they want they can even adopt or having a child through a surrogate mother, but in any case they feel they are not allowed the same rights as anyone else who is not gay. They feel discrimination, and for them, for Adam in particular, is even worse, since they are indeed part of the “good” society, the privileged society, let’s be sincere, of the society that is supposed to lead, not to follow head-down, someone else command.
I recommend this novel to practically everyone, since it’s romantic but also clever, so it will appeal to the reader searching for entertainment, but also to the one who wants something mind-engaging.
Amazon: The Marrying Kind
Amazon Kindle: The Marrying Kind
Paperback: 264 pages
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books (June 5, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1602826706
ISBN-13: 978-1602826700
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