Customer Reviews

Now and Then

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

From the onset of his story, William Cortlett brings us into the heart of his main character, Christopher Metcalfe. While summoned home upon the death of his father, the rather detached Chris returns home to deal with lost innocence and the disallusionment of a wasted life. Finding among his fathers belongings a box containing memorabilia from Chris' own days at boarding school. This prompts a moving detail of Chris' romance with an older boy at school. The author brings us the intensity of adolescent love and sexual desire, with all the abandon given to it at that age. Never once do we doubt Chris' reasons for his love, his desire is felt by the reader, as is his confusion as to it's demise. While the focus being Chris' romance with Stephen at school, the chapters of Chris' life at present brings much to the reader as well. His mother's sense of loss is not nearly as profound as one might have expected, and her life parallel's her sons in many ways. These two characters both must deal with lives wasted on denial of one's true being, following safe roads, forsaking the heart by taking the safer and more constant way through life, only to have regrets later on. There are other characters in the Now part of the story who also show us what a treacherous road are hearts can lead us to. There is also much to be said of Stephen, Chris' object of desire while in school. Stephen, for all his classic British Upper Middle classman ship, has chosen to follow his libido through life, beleiving in his own pleasure first, a direct dichotomy to Chris and his Mother. I was left with a feeling of exhilaration after reading this book. I wanted to seize the moments of my life and live each day fully and honestly, wanting no regrets at the days end. I wish to follow the intuitive heart, the sensual path, and beleive I need not worry what sort of impression I'm giving others, but what a life fully recognized has to offer.

I read this book in a day, I was so absorbed and horrified with the similarities between the narrators life and my own. I was brought up in Sevenoaks and went to a minor public school 50 miles away (never got molested once - and I demand my money back!). He absolutely captures the English middle-class attitudes and denial of emotions as well as the horrific nature (for many) of English public-school life. The alternate past and present format for each chapter works extremely well. His description of the thoughts and emotions of the young Chris, and suppressed emotions of the older version are heart-wrenchingly accurate.

As a reader who speaks English as a second language, I had to keep my dictionary while reading the book to the end. From the first day I started to read the book, I couldn't stop thinking of Kit's life and his love towards Stephen. His deep, poignant and still moving love made me shiver all the time. I even felt the turbulance of his inner state while he first started to think of Stephen when he sorted out things which his father had kept in his study and encountered his past looking at the photos of his schooldays. I sometimes think that it may be my future when I get fortysomething. Even though I was not in passionate love which Chris was in. I read the book six times in order to understand completely by looking up all the difficult words in the dictionary. I cried and shared all the sadness with Chris. Hope Chris will find his true happiness and let his poinant memories behind. This novel was simply magnificient, beautifully written and moving.

I was surprised by the powerful feelings this book evoked in me. It is sparsely, beautifully written, and it feels utterly true, and real. The overwhelming, life-altering emotion of first love -- especially for a gay boy in a boarding school -- speaks volumes to just about everyone in the world. We've all been through the pain of growing up, having dreams broken or changed, and adjusting our lives each step of the way. At the end of this book, you feel free, as if you've been through therapy. It's wonderful.

...Wow! What a wonderful story. The book is slow to start, and it has an unusual gimmick. The story is a narrative told by Chris (Kit) Metcalfe from two of his points of view. The first is NOW, as he is a gay man approaching middle age, and THEN, remembering his days at a Brittish prep school and his first love, Stephen Walker.

Let me say this, while at first I hated the narrator, I grew to love and understand him. This is a story of a broken heart and the damage first love, here gay, wrecks on the heart and the mind. Stephen uses Chris, and isn't until 30 years later that Chris learns the truth of the relationship, and see the other man who may be his true love.

There are many twists that will make you stand up and cheer. This is about a journey that many gay men are on, and how we often hide our feelings from ourselves, even though they may be obvious to those closest to us.

Cortlett writes with confidence on a difficult subject : an adult's reflection on young love lost in a gay context. The novel is filled with themes like the thrills and disappointment of first love, the affair that was doomed from the start, the aging homosexual who has harboured the pain for 30 years, a closeted and insular life, social manners of the middle class British family, etc. All these are handled with care and aplomb by Cortlett without suggesting any foolproof answers. Some passages in the "Then" sections come across as amateurish and naive but are believeable if taken as expressions and thoughts of a immature 15 year-old schoolboy. Cortlett is more successful in the "Now" chapters, displaying a very sensitive touch in the relationship between the family members and playing off the tensions extremely well. It's a heartbreaking tale of love lost and a lifetime of sacrifices and compromises, ending with a question: is it too late? Highly recommended to all readers.

This book has touched me in many ways than I'd have imagined. And believe you me, not many books can do this. I bought this book 2 months ago and only started reading it a few days ago. It was brilliant! I just couldn't put it down!

There was never a dull moment. The love between Chris Metcalfe and Stephen Walker was beautifully described, right from the time when both of them met at a school play till the ultimate break-up. Chris' break-up with Stephen and consequently Chris' breakdown was painful to read. I couldn't sleep that night after finishing the book, it was simply tormenting!

Sad yet hopeful, poignant, and well-crafted. This book has taught me a lesson: Inherit the past, create the present and hope for the future. Thoroughly Recommended!

The simple beauty of this love story shattered me. I kept on crying and couldn't sleep for a week. I kept on having nightmares, not the kind where ghouls chase you...but the kind where you imagine yourself as Chris Metcalfe, waking up one day and you're almost fifty, alone, still in denial. Rummaging through old school memorabilia you come accross the face that haunted you for thirty years....you remember a distant love that was buried under years of self induced uncaring pretension, and suddenly, you are confronted with the vacuity of the life you have been living ...

This is a beautiful love story, whether gay or otherwise, but especially since it is gay ... For a lot of us who are constantly looking for models of how we should act or love, point to us whether being gay is evil or maladjusted, the story tells us that we just fall in love with the special person, whether society deems it wrong or not. We fall in love because we are human.

The story is set in an English public school where Chistopher Metcalf is seduced by Stephen Walker, a prefect two years his senior. From the depravity of "a school system designed to run an empire" we become part of an involving love affair, subsequently swept from the warm passion and tenderness of a Stephen in love to the cold and almost violent machinations of another Stephen, young, brilliant, Cambridge bound, and who has everything to lose should his "luggage loft" be discovered. All the time we are exposed to the strength, constant unselfish love, and rock fast determination of a Chris, that slowly disintegrates into a vicious empty, martyrdom ... constantly waiting for a Steph that doesn't come back...for thirty years. We share the intimate joy of the moment when Steph calls Chris "Kit", then breaks us again when we hear the sacred name uttered by somebody else, a constantly giggling, demonic former fourth former who turns out to be another of Steph's affairs.

Did Steph really love Kit ? this is the question we ask ourselves until the end, when eventually we learn that life must go on, and that even if we do not attain the love of our life forever, at least, in the words of Lord Alfred Tennyson, "Tis better than not to have loved at all." We must go on even after a self-consuming love that "wouldn't die", if only because the seeds of future loves might be strewn along the way, usually without our noticing, since we are too busy consuming ourselves.

This novel is special to me, it is a love-story, unlike a lot out there that are simply pornography. It has graphic details, yes, but intead of simple carnal arousal one finds oneself hurting, too, part of the emotional roller coaster, tender/caustic love affair between Kit and Stephen.

This is the first real young gay love story that I have read. Although it can be said that it also suffers from the seeming defect of gay love stories that they almost always have the element of despair, martyrdom and the ubiquitous disappointment, love stories won't be readable without them. For the romantic among us, it tells us that love transcends societal mores, that being human, we are capable of loving, although it also tells us to "seize the day", and live for the present. It tells us that, although we may have loved the love of our life, we are still capable of loving again... and again...

This is a very good novel about the wasting of a gay man's life after an early heartbreak and subsequent inhibition. Beautifully written and consistently engaging, amusing, and finally deeply moving, my only complaint is that the plotting is a bit too shapely and just slightly predictable--the narrator breaks through and it's implied that he'll go on to have an adult love life after all, which is a bit hopeful in a Hollywood way. But I'd recommend it--the rewards are plentiful and memorable.

I loved this book. It's simply a journal of the past (THEN) & the present (NOW) that keeps you interested all the way through. It got me all hyped up to the end...the meeting--sorry, I can't give away the story. Quite a page-turner!
It made me want to write my own story in a similar venue....perhaps one day...I will.