Best Gay Contemporary General Fiction: Damaged Angels by Larry Benjamin
Like life these stories reflected all possible endings, good and bad, happily ever after and not, forever love and tragic losses. It wasn’t an easy read for me, cause the author managed to sketch these mostly young men in a way that you arrived to care for them, and wanted for all of them to be happy, but unfortunately, that is not realistic. Truth, even in the tragedy, some of them at least found the comfort of knowing they are, or were, loved. It can be a small consolation, but for some of them it was the most important thing.
On the contrary of other literary anthologies, cause Damaged Angels is for me one of the best example of Gay literature, the style wasn’t heavy and the stories flows smoothly, if deeply involving. There is no judgment in the author, like there is no solution, he is not teaching a lessons to young men, but maybe he is giving them voice when most often their voices are too low to be heard. Recurring themes are AIDS, drugs, mental illness, hustling, sometime alone, sometime mixed in the same story; they are tragic topics, with an almost impossible way out of it, and indeed, not many will find that light at the end of the tunnel.
But even if it sounds strange, I feel like the author believes in forever love, and that, if someone is lucky enough to find it, there is a small chance of happiness, and maybe that light at the end of the tunnel can be switched on for them.
Paperback: 216 pages
Publisher: Beaten Track Publishing (April 8, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1909192198
ISBN-13: 978-1909192195
Amazon: Damaged Angels
Amazon Kindle: Damaged Angels
More Reviews by Author at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Reviews
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