Customer Reviews

Nothing Gold Can Stay: A Novel

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"Nothing Gold Can Stay" is an enormously enjoyable read - suspenseful, funny, sexy, descriptive and thought-provoking. Lovely to say its intelligence is nowhere stuffy, or set up in such as way as to impress the reader, rather than simply to entertain and intrigue. In fact, the first few pages read like an old-fashioned pot-boiler, and Nelson doesn't really hit his best stride until almost a third of the way through.

I'm a regular mystery reader, who did not guess who the murderer was until a few pages before it was revealed. Don't really see how other reviewers knew. It really could have been ....

Nelson keeps his readers concerned about the safety of his protagonist, Ray, who takes on the task of investigator when it becomes apparent that the police are being hounded by the press into possibly settling upon an innocent foreigner -- Ray's more-than-just-a-friend Eduardo -- instead of finding the real serial killer. Or is Eduardo really innocent?

As other reviewers have noted, the story is enhanced by Nelson's descriptive writing and the trip to London that he gives to readers.

I especially liked his descriptions of people. One character, Lily, "betrayed no outward signs of frazzlement on her pretty, 40-ish face. Under her soft,brown, indifferently bobbed hair, Lily always had an air of baffled yet determined self-possession, as if everything connected to her happened by accident. She seemed confident in her ability to shape order out of this chaos, then unsurprised when it slipped back into chaos."

Ray sees one fellow student, Ursina, as a reflection of the "Old World's sour old soul."

"Ursina was Europa herself, sleepwalking across a bedrock of indifference to suffering. She embodied Europe's premedieval tribal darkness, the selfishness it required to survive when your neighbor got bludgeoned by another neighbor in that cool deciduous jungle of ever-contested lands."

This is good stuff. I identified with both these women.

Nelson also does an extraordinary job of describing what the world looks like to a gay man -- a well-adjusted gay man, but one nevertheless who has been buffeted by the loss of so many friends to AIDS. He's also realistically wary of a Western culture whose contempt for "the homosexual lifestyle" is never far away. How long has that been the case? It's a question considered in "Nothing Gold Can Stay."

This really isn't a run-of-the-mill mystery. Recommended for anyone looking for an intelligent, entertaining read -- and a visit to the gay bars and baths of London they might otherwise never see....

I reviewed this book to pick as a possible choice for a book club selection this summer. The characters were amazing and well-written, and Nelson definitely has a talent for detail. However, with this being a murder mystery, I expected a little more from that part of the plot itself. Nelson has done a fabulous job of taking the reader on a "gay tour" through London, and since I have never been there, I thoroughly enjoyed those parts of the book. The love interest he builds between Ray and Eduardo is very strong and gives the reader a sense of belief that these characters might actually exist beyond the page. However, I guessed who the murderer was early in the story, and was left wanting more. This is a great book for anyone who has been or always wanted to go to London, or for anyone who enjoys gay fiction!

I'm not a big mystery fan, so I DIDN'T guess the killer right away (and I'm not sure I believe those who say they did...), but I agree that the real pleasure of this novel is in the writing itself - Nelson's prose is fluid, his metaphors apt, and his insights into the position of the gay male in society at the turn of the millenium simply dead on target. His choice of the first person pulled me right in and made me a part of the experience - I've never been to London until now.

The story is great! The characters are well thought out, three dimensional and the representations of gay life in London are right on, but as for the "mystery" (the true identity of a serial killer who has murdered one of the students at the school where the novel takes place), well, that one was a little too transparent. I guessed the killer right away, but still enjoyed the novel immensely and recommend it.

I began Casey Nelson's first novel with great expectations: it's a mystery, it's gay, and it's set in London. All three make it
unique in this particular genre of popular fiction. But I came away sorely disappointed. I got gay and I got London, but I got
shortshrifted on mystery.

The plot has merry old London under siege by a vicious serial killer nicknamed Prince Bi, for his propensity for
killing young men and women in most sexually aggressive ways. The murders hit too close to home for our protagonist Ray
O'Brien, an American abroad studying drama and sexuality at an exclusive London summer program. His new friend, the
handsome free spirit Derrick Quince, is the latest victim of Prince Bi's atrocities, and Ray sets out, so to speak, to discover
Who Done It. Things are further complicated for our hero when he finds himself falling under the sway of his fellow student
Eduardo, an Argentinian beauty of mysterious background who may or may not himself be the killer.

It's a good set-up for a thriller, but Nelson doesn't follow through. He is obviously much more interested in showing us how
well he can write convoluted sentences than providing us the suspense we've come for as mystery readers. The book dissolves
into a kind of parlor comedy/drama, a la Jane Austen, or a study of conflicting American and British cultures, a la Henry James,
and Nelson even retains the Master's loquacity. Often the dialogue consists of ruminations on art and sexuality and sexual
politics, which is all well and good, but it doesn't move the plot along and it's just...well...show offy...as though the author
thought a display of his erudition would make up for his inability to "construct" (one of the narrator's favorite verbs AND nouns,
so you can see what section of academia he comes from; he's not talking about skyscrapers here when he uses it) a compelling
mystery. But it doesn't. It just sounds stilted.

There are a few moments here and there of suspense but not enough. The ending is especially perfunctory. The killer just
confesses. There's no showdown with O'Brien and no sense of endangerment. The killer confesses, and all is suddenly right
with the world.

It's really kind of a cheat.