I Am Not Raymond Wallace

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As his bursary draws to a close, he’s faced with a choice which we know from the start he will regret. Like so many men of his time and of his kind, Raymond faces a choice between conformity, courage and compartmentalisation. The decision he makes will ricochet destructively through lives and decades until―in another time, another city; in Paris, 2003―Raymond’s son Joe finally meets Joey. Raymond Wallace, a recent graduate of Cambridge of age 21, arrives in NYC in the summer of 1963 for a 3-month internship with the NY Times.

I strongly identified with the way that the internalised homophobia was portrayed and how it played out. I Am not Raymond Wallace is a multi-stranded story of queer redemption spanning multiple generations, told with precision-tooled prose, sharply-imagined settings and compassionately-observed characterisation. If you’re into romance stories, and believe in the power of love and how much it can change a person, I’d recommend you this book. Kenyon does a nice job recreating the pre-Stonewall milieu and there are some nice touches to the story.Witty, touching and hopeful, it’s an absorbing novel which ends with a sentence that brought tears to my eyes. And the way that gay men of the time, under the pressure of all that, tended towards hot, furtive, anonymous sex with strangers. Although I needed to take a break during the Paris visit, and I wiped tears from my eyes more than once, it was a beautiful story crafted artfully. It tells important history of what it was like to be homosexual in the 1950s and 1960s - fear of losing job, being blackmailed, thought to be sick, etc, etc. When Raymond takes this 'job' and is told that he needs more 'appropriate for the times' clothing to fit in to the group that he is going to be doing undercover writing for; he has no idea that he is going to fall in love whole heartedly for the first time in his life with the young man at the clothier.

Doty assigns Raymond to go undercover and discover the codes used by the homosexuals to identify themselves to each other. What continues for the rest of the 300 plus pages of this debut novel has got to be the most beautifully written account of a 21 year old mans 'Sexual Awakenings' as I have ever read.The rest of his life will be spent yearning for the love he found in New York, later writing about the pain of loss and repression. A "historical" novel that starts in 1963 with some looks back and an epilogue that is set in modern times. This in no way makes me more likely to give the book a glowing review because when we used to sit together in school orchestra, he was quite annoying. year old Raymond Wallace is going to Cambridge University and is sent to New York for a 3 month internship at the New York Times, and he has no idea that he is gay.

The story is highly evocative of Manhattan in 1963 at the start and written in a traditional novel style. It reminds us how bad things were for LGBT+ people within living memory - and indeed continue to be in many countries around the world. being covertly blackmailed by an estranged wife, and that he himself is to assist the straight-laced Doty on an article about the ‘explosion of overt homosexuality’ in the city. He does a good job of evoking those times, the shame, the fear and paranoia, the hiding and recognition codes.The Raymond's controlling mother arrives to spend a couple of days with him at the end of his internship and accompany him home. It’s shocking to remember that Raymond had come from a country four years away from decriminalising his sexuality, and, of course, it would be many more years before same sex relationships could be both celebrated and recognised in law. I couldn't put this book down, I had to make myself when I had things to do, otherwise I would have sat in one place until I finished it.

I Am not Raymond Wallace is a multi-stranded story of queer redemption spanning multiple generations, told with precision-tooled prose, sharply-imagined settings and compassionately-observed characterisation. There are and were scenes of gay sex portrayed quite vividly, but this should be a story that anyone and not only gay men or boys, should read if you know what true and real love and love for LIFE is all about. But then he does not have the courage to take all the risks he would need to take, to live out his romance.It's unclear to me what purpose this novel serves, other than to reinforce an outdated narrative that featured privileged protagonists who had the luxury of a closet. The decision he makes will ricochet destructively through lives and decades until—in another time, another city; in Paris, 2003—Raymond’s son Joe finally meets Joey.