This book was just too poorly written for me. The action is not well described, the characters are unappealing and it all feels quite unrealistic.

One of the best literary Gay novels I have read in this genre.
A great book.
A classic. ( )

Flamboyant, mercurial Alistair Dodge and steadfast, cautious Roger Sansarc are second cousins who are both gay and whose lifelong friendship begins when they first meet as nine-year-old boys in 1954. At crucial moments in their personal histories their lives intersect, and each discovers his own unique - and uniquely gay- identity.

Spanning around thirty five years starting 1954 we follow the spasmocically interweaving lives of two boys, second cousins, both gay. Roger Sansarc, the narrator, and Alastair Dodge are to look at more like brothers, but there the similarity ends. Alastair is the polar opposite of the staid, conservative Roger. Not surprisingly their relationship is volatile, with Alastair invariably the one to light the fuse.

It is Alastair who awakens Roger to his gayness by virtually offering him to another. Later it is Alastair who covets Rogers greatest love, The dark and handsome Vietnam hero, Matt Loguidice, sailor, model, poet and gay icon. but that is just a small part of this vast novel that takes us through the days of gay sexual liberation to the devastation of the AIDS epidemic as Roger leads us though his varied life.

But this is much more than a chronicle of gay life through the second half of the Twentieth Century, it is a brilliantly written, entertaining, thought provoking, funny and moving. ( )

Eine überragende Geschichte über zwei Brüder, die zudem auch noch meisterlich erzählt ist. Bravo! ( )