Reading Room - Amid the Noise and Haste and As Perrenial as the Grass by Callisto
The reason I love these stories is: I’m a sucker for H/C Bodie, and a sucker for older lads who survive into retirement. In AtNaH, an ill-tempered, recuperating Bodie, is frustrated with Doyle’s hovering and over-protectiveness. APAtG, is the “thirty year timestamp”.
In both stories, Callisto gives us lovely imagery of the lads relationship throughout the years. In the early days, their tempers almost get the better of them. Until of course, they come to understand their love for each other. This is not done in an overly sappy way, with flowery language that you can’t fathom coming from the lads mouths. It’s a subtle but profound, almost silent, awakening that deepens post active agent status.
There are bumps along the way, of course. They are equal in stubbornness and irascibility.
“Over time Doyle had learned to keep his head down and leave him to it.”
Bodie’s pov: “They were simply wired differently and he had had to learn to 'speak Doyle' as he once joked, to read the signs and relax.”
They are also equally tender and caring in the exact way that they know the other needs them to be. Summed up beautifully in this passage;
“So it was not the kiss that stilled Bodie's world and held the anger and frustration in his throat. He knew it was the hands, the unexpected sweetness of those hands holding his face like that. The strongest, softest, safety-net in the world. This was Ray Doyle after all, a man not given to such moments of easy tenderness. A thumb stroke on the side of each cheek and Bodie's eyes stung.”
I like this representation of the boys and their life together. Sequels don’t always work for some stories, but APAtG is well done. Stories that you can come back to and enjoy as much as you did the first time you read them.
I won't be able to reply to comments tonight, since I will be at work. I'll catch up with everyone tomorrow. Enjoy!