When Love Comes to Town

Rating:
Summary: The Cost of Secrets
Review: Neil Byrne's biggest problem is how to keep both sides of his life apart. At school is a good student and the talented rugby player. He has quite a few friends, but very few long-term girlfriends. That isn't to say there is nobody at school he wants today to date. There is. In fact, Neil has even written some poems that describe how he feels. The only problem is, "Does Ian feel the same?" Being afraid of rejection, Neil decides to stay silent. Instead, he begins to go

out and become apart of Dublin's gay nightlife. He meets the usual suspects: the solicitous older man, transvestites, and queens. He also meets Shane whom he hopes will be his one true love. In the end, he trades one problem for another. The world inhabited by his created family turns out to be just as stifling and insecure as the world inhabited by those he loves at home. In the end, he discovers that true love is literally just around the corner. This is a sad and funny book that traces a young man's search for love despite the obstacles created by his family and the bar culture of which he is a part.

Rating:
Summary: The Cost of Secrets
Review: Neil Byrne's biggest problem is how to keep both sides of his life apart. At school is a good student and the talented rugby player. He has quite a few friends, but very few long-term girlfriends. That isn't to say there is nobody at school he wants today to date. There is. In fact, Neil has even written some poems that describe how he feels. The only problem is, "Does Ian feel the same?" Being afraid of rejection, Neil decides to stay silent. Instead, he begins to go

out and become apart of Dublin's gay nightlife. He meets the usual suspects: the solicitous older man, transvestites, and queens. He also meets Shane whom he hopes will be his one true love. In the end, he trades one problem for another. The world inhabited by his created family turns out to be just as stifling and insecure as the world inhabited by those he loves at home. In the end, he discovers that true love is literally just around the corner. This is a sad and funny book that traces a young man's search for love despite the obstacles created by his family and the bar culture of which he is a part.

Rating:
Summary: For the truly romantic
Review: It's not that this is a love story kind of romantic novel. It's more like a wonderfully sensitive story of Neil Byrne, just graduated, just turned 18 in search of love. The kind of love he can dig his fingers into, feel, and return in full measure. Set in Dublin Ireland one witnesses the close-knit family life of Dubliners, from their happy moments to the moments that tear them apart. Neil's search for love and acceptance puts him on the outside looking in with his school mates, his siblings, his best friend, all "rhyming couplets" while Neil is different and vacilates between fitting in and going his own way into Dublin's gay night life. Here he sees both the sad and the promise of something happy for himself. He meets Shane, a beautiful man, who might be the love Neil is searching for. Something odd: author Tom Lennon chooses to become vague during the novel's crisis moments when Neil "comes out" to his friends, family, when he is gay bashed, and near the end when... well I can't relate what happens. This is the kind of book that draws you in immediately and keeps you spellbound and rooting for the main character. Lennon's true ability is to make you feel what the sensitive Neil feels in both his wins and losses. The truly romantic will love this book. The jaded and cynical will probably not. After all, it's a coming out story, set in Ireland, from the point of view of a teenager. The story is sometimes funny, sometimes sad, but always interesting and in many ways insightful. Ronald L. Donaghe is the author of Uncle Sean.

Rating:
Summary: Finding truth
Review: Neil, a young lad in Ireland, struggles to live truthfully as a gay youth while pretending with his parents and friends that he's just one of the guys. He slowly becomes involved in Dublin's gay community, and meets another guy who's a few years older, but before anything can happen, Neil is attacked by gay-bashers. After recovering, Neil finds that dating is difficult, especially when he's hiding so much, and the relationship sours. Neil comes out to his parents and friends, and finds some support, but everything changes, some for the worse and some for the better. This amazing coming out story does end with hope and a possibility for a connection to combat the loneliness of living as a gay man in a small town. Like Stuart Thorogood's "Outcast" and K. M. Soehnlein's "The World of Normal Boys", Lennon's book is a potent, poignant tale of what it's like being young and gay.