Call Me (Stonewall Inn Editions) [Paperback]

P-P Hartnett (Author)

Book Description

Series: Stonewall Inn Editions | Publication Date: December 15, 1997

When Liam decides to begin answering the personal ads of London's gay papers, he is at first bemused and fascinated. After all, it is simply a way to entertain himself and pass the time.

What Liam doesn't bargain for, however, is his growing reliance on the ads and the men who answer them. What at first was a form of distraction is quickly becoming an obsession, and Liam is discovering just who finds him so alluring.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Gay male fiction has long had the reputation of being simply about sex, a charge that is untrue, even when sex is the main topic of the story. P-P Harnett's Call Me, which was released in England in 1996 to critical acclaim and a hailstorm of outrage, is certainly riddled with sex. Liam begins to answer personal ads to find out (or so he tells himself) about the type of person who places them. He quickly becomes obsessed with the ads, his respondents, and new sexual experiences. But while Call Me is graphically sexual, it also addresses what it means to be a gay man looking for human contact in the maelstrom of the AIDS epidemic. Harnett has a winning, breezy style and a perverse sense of humor, but the power of the book resides in his ability to convey the sheer desperation that people feel--not about sex, but about the desire to make sense out of their lives, their feelings, and their desires.

From Library Journal

After his lover dies, Liam embarks upon a quest to end his solitary and empty life. Placing an ad in numerous gay London newspapers and magazines, he sits back and waits for responses, which are abundant. The result is a sexually explicit story line featuring page after page of letters and sexual liaisons with a host of characters too numerous to mention. Liam at first seems selective and slightly compassionate to the many lonely men and women who want his company. However, he makes an about-face in the last chapters, becoming cruel and sadistic to just about everyone he meets. Although the reader realizes that Liam is just a little bit unstable as he offers memories of an abusive father and an awful childhood, it's hard to feel much empathy for him. This tale of a dark side of gay life is better suited to the pages of underground gay magazines and newspapers mainly because of the format the author uses, complete with a glossary of terms for the ads. Hartnett has a way with words but in this case needs a plot and a more sympathetic character. Not recommended.?Shirley Gibson Coleman, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., Mich.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin (December 15, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312180632
• ISBN-13: 978-0312180638
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,924,531 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Self-hatred run riot, February 25, 1999

By 

Charles Slovenski (Geneva Switzerland) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Call Me (Stonewall Inn Editions) (Paperback)

There is so much that is upsetting about this novel that it is difficult to even reflect on it. Among the many problems is the supposition that the protagonist is using the classified ads as a way of dealing with his grief for his boyfriend. The author, whose writing talent is considerable, fails to ever fully enunciate how much Liam loved his boyfriend and how his death has left him bereft. His passing seems more like a literary devise to justify in some vaguely untouchable way his truely reprehensible behaviour towards the people he meets. And, although the characters he meets and the situations he describes are interesting, there are repeated and pointless references to the tragic acts of serial killer Dennis Nilson, a murderer who never used classified ads as part of his hunting method. Add to this the many and dull passages about an electronic keyboard and it's technical advantages and the result is a novel that appears offensive and capricious and does nothing at all to support or refute the reality of people who are lonely, grieving or simply looking for love or sex. The hero in this novel simply sneers and loses any credence with the reader.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Worth it, April 20, 1999

By 

Jon Miller-Carrasco - See all my reviews

This review is from: Call Me (Stonewall Inn Editions) (Paperback)

_Call Me_ is not a quick, lighthearted book to read, but it has depth and power. Liam's struggle is to grieve the loss of his lover without knowing how. The invention of Bike Boy and all his subsequent activities to me were painfully obvious attempts at keeping grief at bay: all of it seems designed to keep moving, keep talking, keep diverted, do anything except authentically mourn his loss.

I thought Hartnett wrote a strong, moving novel about struggling, confused people. I doubt it will ever be a movie of the week starring Brandy, but that's only one of its selling points.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Personal ad experiences?, March 6, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Call Me (Stonewall Inn Editions) (Paperback)

Liam seeks sexual encounters through responses he receives from personal ads placed in many different papers and magazines. He takes on the persona of many identities as he meets up with like minded individuals. Liam comes across in a cold and calculating manner, indifferent to the feelings of other that he meets, uses and discards along the way. His one night stands are unfulfilling and it is never clear just what he really wants. At times it appears that perhaps sudden death at the hands of one of the respondents to his ads would be a fitting end. I suppose we all have at one time or another met up with individuals who are nothing more than users.