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Review

It's as if J.G. Hayes teacher said "To hell with grammar and sentence structure - write from the heart" - and that's just what he has done with his brilliant debut collection of stories and novellas about growing up gay in South Boston. In turns poetic, violent and erotic, these stories are as real as fiction gets. Their power lies in the feeling between the words, the part of the story left untold. They tell of young men whose sexual and romantic feelings for other young men are left unexpressed, rejected or shocked into a reality where they must leave their community. In "The Rain" Joey goes mad from his love of Kevin. In "Regular Flattop", Bib, Tommy and the unnamed protagonist are all in love but can't seem to get the words out. In the title story "This Thing Called Courage" Brian, a well-spoken heating repair man is brought back to his first love when he enters a condo that used to be his high school. These stories are muscular, literate and there's power emanating from these words.

Scott Cranin

"If there was a power Big Enough in this universe to stop me, Kev, they haven't thought of it yet. We hadn't turned the garage light on for fear your mother would discover us in our piffity pilfering, and we were standing there, a bit of the streetlight smearing through the diggity, dirty windows. And I reached out. I watched my hand (with secrets of its own) travel through the space between us.
I extended my fingertips. I lowered them, softly as a lunar landing, onto your hand.
I did what I was forbidden to do, Kev.
I touched your hand, as carefully and tenderly as if it was your heart, beating."
From "The Rain, a novella