Customer Reviews

Call Me (Stonewall Inn Editions)

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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.

_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.

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.

P-P Hartnett's novel CALL ME will live forever as a document of erotic emancipation, spreading the ecumenical spirit of impersonal and anonymous sex to all parts of Southern England, from Clerkenwell to Wapping. The hero is Liam, a photographer with a powerful sex urge and a deep melancholy who is trying desperately to get over the pull of his former boyfriend, Ray. Almost accidentally he begins to answer personal ads in the gay papers like TIME OUT. As an American reader, I didn't realize that the "small ads" must have some kind of sex connotation to them, the kind that "personal" evokes here in the USA (so this bok can be recommended for broadening one's vocabulary as well).

It's been three years since Ray, and soon Liam finds himself in bed with a strapping young boy called Jack. Sex rears its head and suddenly Liam realizes ehat a fool he's been all these years, wasting his time mourning a man who, perhaps, never really loved him any more than his nicely decorated apartment or collection of Pet Shop Boys CDs, no matter how gleamingly polished, did or do. He takes out his camera and begins to photograph Jack's sleeping head, shoulders, ass. You'd think he was happy but shortly afterwards, another day, the temptation to answer another ad seizes him. And then it begins, the endless addiction to sex in the papers.

Hartnett clearly has been intimate with a lot of men, and in addition Liam exhibits a keen interest in Dennis Nilsen, the gay serial killer whom some have compared to the USA's Jeffrey Dahmer (who apparently counted Nilsen as one of his role models). I'm not sure what's going on with this aspect of the novel, but whatever it's doing, it works. Those of you who love London for its seediness and for the availablity of every kind of man on its sex underground, will nod in recognition as you find yourselves portrayed in this book, as though in Huysmans' dark mirror. Hartnett has written other books, all of them to be recommended in one way or another, but this is the best of them yet.

Hartnett's tale of one gay man's adventures in the personal ads is quite dark and without catharsis. But it certainly is fun! Liam is getting over his lover's death and begins entertaining himself with answering personal ads. This progresses to placing elaborate personal ads just to see whom he'll attract. Through the hot sex and the wild stalker, Liam finds out a lot about himself as well as the nature of those answering personal ads. Hartnett has a great commentary on gay culture (the story is set in London, but it's pertinent to America as well). It's definitely a typically British story, so it might be difficult for some American audiences looking for fluffy, bright gay stories, but it's quite worth reading if for nothing else but the wonderfully sexy trysts.