Sex With Strangers [Hardcover]

Geoffrey Rees (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1993

As he struggles to locate his feelings and to come to terms with love and sex, a young gay man engages in several ill-fated, passionate relationships. A first novel.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The author of this fiction debut was a college student in both Chicago and New York--the two cities in which the novel is set. As if to prove his familiarity with these locales, Rees includes an overabundance of references to streets, landmarks and other local identity tags. Readers may wish he had applied similar verisimilitude to the personalities of his characters. As an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, Thomas Hobart, the protagonist, is "adopted" by a group of academic poseurs given to fatuous pronouncements ("beauty is nothing but a veil for death and destruction") and smart labels such as "Pomo-Homos" (postmodern homosexuals). Later, Thomas pursues student life in New York, there encountering another eccentric band, virtually indistinguishable from his Chicago companions. Though Thomas is gay, there is a surprising lack of emotional connection among any of the characters. Thomas's furtive same-time-next-week sexual liaison in Chicago and a relationship in New York seem to indicate the futility of romantic attachments, and these "strangers" remain as distanced from the reader as from one another. There is not much action here, nor any revelatory insights; and while some descriptive passages convey atmosphere, they're generally verbose.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This first novel hardly lives up to its titillating title. Thomas, our narrator, sets off for college in Chicago and gets picked up by a train conductor along the way. Thus begins a year-long affair characterized by weekly sex dates with very little conversation. Meanwhile, back at the University of Chicago, Thomas falls in with a set who imagine themselves jaded, call themselves "pomo-homos," short for postmodernist homosexuals, and adopt as a motto "Love without lust; lust without love." They are a dreary bunch, short on both wit and intelligence, whose ringleader, Michael, seems to be in love with Thomas. In Part 2, Thomas moves to New York and takes up with a mildly abusive but awfully good-looking painter. Then Michael shows up, only to die from AIDS, which provides the novel with a rather cheap ending. Throughout the novel we are cut off from Thomas; we never learn his thoughts, reactions, and certainly nothing of his emotions. For the narrator of what is a traditional coming-of-age novel, this doesn't work. Not recommended.
- Brian Kenney, Brooklyn P.L.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 245 pages
• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux (T); 1st edition (November 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374261652
• ISBN-13: 978-0374261658
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,716,510 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Speaks for itself, February 19, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Sex With Strangers (Hardcover)

The best possible way to review this book is allow it to speak for itself. Take, for example, this passage, from page 174: "I looked at my watch and wondered where he was at that exact moment, what he was doing, whether he was thinking of me, missing me, suffering as I suffered, counting the minutes until we would be together again, the intervening time, like Zeno's paradox, seeming somehow insurmountable, each passing second nothing but a painful reminder of all the other seconds which must yet come to pass, the possibility of his return requiring the invention of a whole new calculus, a mathematics of love and desire and obsession and anxiety to describe the sick geometry of feeling where our lives intersected, to explain my own future survival, understanding like death, inevitable, yet grace somehow always intervening, four days left, two, one, twelve hours, six, three, one, thirty minutes, fifteen, ten, five, one, twenty seconds, ten, five, one-fifth, one-tenth, and on and on and on into an eternity of darkness. Would it ever end?" Funny--just what I was thinking.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Have you ever considered "Sex with Strangers?", March 29, 2000

By 

Shannon Draper - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sex With Strangers (Hardcover)

Geoffrey Rees' first novel attempts to not only answer that question in the abstract, with many off the cuff thoughts ranging from lustful to winsome, he also uses his lead character Thomas to address the issue. Rees allows Thomas to lead the reader through a whirlwind of exploits, both personal and sexual, involving people that the audience must define as strangers or friends. A recurring question in the novel is one of how well anyone on this whirling dervish of a planet really knows one another. Sex is one form of knowing, but as Thomas and his Chicago cronies Jane and Michael (not the adorable brother and sister from Mary Poppins) point out, the best relationships for Post Modern Homosexuals to become involved in (or Pomo Homos as they call themselves) are those that employ "lust without love; love without lust."

For anyone who has ever fallen in love with a city or a group of people on the first meeting, this novel will hit home. Rees describes both Chicago and New York City with love and affection, as though he is remembering two long lost lovers--recounting each of their most breathtaking and disheartening points. The relationships that define Thomas as a man emerging from the cocoon of adolescence are immediate kinships between himself and people he would not have considered befriending if given the choice--their attachments to one another defy explanation and are therefore stronger than those which are sought out.

Thomas is a character for all seasons: he experiences total abandon, confusion in the face of new attractions, and is as hopeful as the next wide-eyed romantic that love will eventually find him.

Pick up this novel with a glass of wine, a sense of humor, a love of adventure and an open mind and you are sure to enjoy this playful romp through one young mans first collegiate year.

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Sex w/Strangers" is just the beginning..., September 1, 2000

By 

Myssuh Bean (Anywhere and Nowhere) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sex With Strangers (Hardcover)

This book struck me as something that most books strike me as, a straight person, just being "skanky"... just by reading the title... but, this book isn't like that... if your "homophobic"... this isn't for you... but, i found this book great... one of my favorites... i'm proud to be a "Pomo-Homo"...