Customer Reviews

Shameless

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I found this book somewhat difficult to read. Many books you just want to keep reading and not put down. Not this one. It was okay. At the end of the book I found myself not really caring what happened to the characters. The main story line was diluted with the presence of two sub-plots. The three plot lines intersected from time to time. In the end I think that the lack of focus on the main story really made for poor story telling. The reolution at the end really left you wanting too. It was all very Hollywood. The basic plot is very simple. Guy's boyfriend dumps him. Guy falls into lifestyle of sex, drugs, and clubbing. Guy desperately looks for someone to love. And, big surprise, guy finds him in the end. And, they all live happily ever after. Well, the last part is left up to you imagination, since the author doesn't telly you. You are left really wondering what happens, but then again it does leave room for a sequel.

There is a review on the book that says that it's like "Queer as Folk," but this book seems to have no heart. Although the book has a character similar to Brian Kinney, Brian has some redeeming qualities, but the character in the book had none.

This wasn't a book that was exactly a page turner. The characters of Martin, John and Caroline live rather humdrum lives, obvious as to why they have to take so many drugs. Some funny situations, especially the one where Martin snorts his roomates toenail filings thinking that it is cocaine. Overall, not a book I would recommend very highly. Haven't read any other works by Burston and don't know if I will in the future. He is a good writer, however this story just didn't do it for me.

This book was mildly entertaining, but overall it is something I could have easily done without. That's not to say it's bad. It is written well enough, you get to know the characters adequately and the story is pretty interesting along the way, but by the end it's sort of like peering into the lives of a few random Londoners for a period of time. At most this book will make you want to start up a drug habit (with the exception of one non-fatal OD, this book paints a rather flattering picture of drug use, one that is at least more accurate than what you learn in DARE), and I found most of the humor revolved around that. This isn't a book to avoid, but perhaps one I wouldn't put at the top of your list either.

Martin, in his thirties, a graphic designer working on well known supermarket's own brand products, is just about to have his live-in boyfriend of three years, Christopher, walk out on him. John, an air steward, is Martin's best friend although not very supportive, being self centred and likely to run at the first sign of trouble, he is also gay and can be bitchy, and is notorious for his quick turn round of boyfriends. Martin's other best friend is Caroline, she holds down a well paid job which also provides a platinum card and company car. She has a steady boyfriend, Graham, to whom she is on the verge of suggesting that they move in together until she becomes suspicious and believes that he may secretly be gay. When she finally blurts out her suspicions in front of his friends that not surprisingly puts an end to their relationship.
The story follows the adventures of the three characters as they each search for fulfilment, namely a reliable partner. They have varying degrees of success and failure, spending nights in London's gay clubs ranging from the glamorous to S&M bars, enjoying some fleeting sexual encounters and in not always the most salubrious locations, and partaking of plenty of drugs, both in quantity and variety.
It is a very funny story, and the prose flows with surprising ease, but it seems to lack drive, and one feels it would be easy to leave to proceedings at any time and not feel one was missing anything. However it is a pleasant enough tale despite the participants reliance on drugs, and it wraps everything up neatly and satisfyingly at the conclusion.

Shameless left me speechless. This book is the single most offensive piece of crap masquerading as gay fiction I have ever read. To make matters worse, it got a review in the New York Times Book Review-a GOOD review. This is troubling because so few gay novels ever are reviewed in the Times and those that do--The Year of Ice by Brian Malloy comes to mind--get bad reviews despite being well-written, ambitious books with something to say.

The book is so revoltingly bad I'm not even sure where to
start. Shameless reads as if it were written by Pat Robertson, Fred Phelps, and Rick Santorum conjuring up the vilest things they believe about gay men. There is no evidence of that, so my theory is that Mr. Burston is actually a very sensitive, talented soul who has written marvelous books only to have them be rejected as not commercial enough. Shameless, then, is his saying "If they want crap, I'll give them crap!"

The nominal plot involves Martin being dumped by his
loathsome boyfriend and Martin's ensuing search for "love" amongst the body obsessed, drugged out party boys in the London nightclub scene. Great place to look for love. I would call the characters two-dimensional, but that gives them considerably more depth than they actually have. No one in the clubs gives Martin the time of day until he loses weight, dresses better and starts consuming huge amounts of drugs. He also has lots of sex, but no one ever calls him the next day.

The dust jacket says Shameless is one part Sex and the City.
I'm not sure which part they mean as Sex and the City was witty,
moving, and well crafted. I suppose Shameless does have sex, but
it's actually boring and not any fun at all. Perhaps there is
another Sex and the City of which I haven't heard. One where Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte use and abuse each
other like the characters do in Shameless. In addition, what passes for wit in the book are observations such as "If John's theory was correct, then gay men aged at about the same rate as dogs." What a fresh observation that is.

I think what most upset me about the book is the idea that gay men are as shallow, vain, selfish, and repulsive as the men
in this book. One character eats his own vomit because he's afraid he's puked up some of his drugs and will miss his high. I'm not kidding. Another snorts toenail clippings thinking it's actually coke his roommate swiped from him. (This was neither funny nor believable.) In addition, a toilet bowl gets cracked in a way that I don't want to repeat, much less ever think about again. Worst of all, when one of Martin's "friends" has a drug overdose on a dance club floor, one friend walks away while the crowd of gay men dances on wishing the distraction would be swept away. Trust me, I haven't even begun to catalogue the list of ugliness that passes between these people who supposedly care about each other.

In case you're wondering, the book is not satire, not a
scathing critique of the underbelly of gay society. It's supposed to be, in the words of the New York Times Book reviewer, "...hootingly funny yet strangely tender first novel..." Yeah, about as tender as a gang rape in prison. If I were a young gay man and I read this novel, the first thing I would do would be to join one of those Christian conversion groups. At least living a life of denial and self-hatred as a straight person wouldn't be nearly as horrible as being the immoral sub-humans in this book. And if this is truly what we as gay men are like, heaven help us all.

"Shameless" could have been subtitled "Gay Men Behaving Badly, When They Are Old Enough To Know Better." It follows a 32 year old man, an advertising executive who considered himself rather conservative, who goes through an emotionally-jarring breakup with his younger boyfriend, who leaves him for a hard-partying hustler of his own age. This triggers a kind of "early midlife crisis" ... which I have actually witnessed in several gay acquaintances over the years ... which causes him to "get buff" and then go on a hedonistic binge of drugs, alcohol, casual sex and wild partying.

The evolution of Martin (the main character) is paralleled by his straight best friend/fag hag Caroline, who becomes mad at herself for ruining what could have been a great relationship, and goes on a self-destrictive binge of drugs herself. Martin also becomes more and more like his friend John, whom Martin previously looked down on as being shallow and insincere in his sexual/romantic habits. The novel touches on drug use (especially "K" and "E", the ones most favored by party boys, both gay and straight), some tentative voyages into the gay S&M scene, a visit by Martin's father (who gets into the partying as well), and being "out" in the workplace.

It's not great literature, but is a somewhat entertaining light read, one most suited to those like the pre-change Martin who want to sample the "party boy" life for a while (Not my style, but, from what I have been told, the depiction is fairly accurate.) By the end of the story, Martin and some other characters learn there are consequences to their irresponsible actions, and Martin and Caroline both go back to their earlier less-adverturous personas.

Personally, I considered the back cover notes to be an accurate depiction of what the novel was about. "Sex and the City" did feature at least one character whose sexual appetite and choices were rather far-fetched, and the same is true with some characters in "Queer As Folk." Neither of those shows claimed to depict the behavior of all or most single heterosexual women (or, for QAF, gay men), but there is no doubt that some people like that DO exist. If you care not to know anything about them, and want to pretend they don't exist, then perhaps this book isn't for you. But I would not criticize the author or publisher for presenting it, as is, for those who may be more open minded about the subject.

Although I'd like to claim that the liberal dousing of four-letter words in "Shameless" left me blushing, it didn't. On the other hand, if you find detailed and somewhat lurid descriptions of body parts and functions distasteful, you may not find this book as entertaining and laugh-out-loud funny as I did. All in all, reading this first novel by Paul Burston was rather like having an uninhibited, raucously humorous drama queen, who has no fear of using cliche-ridden narrative ("There is no Mr. Right...There is only Mr. Right Now"), relate the most recent dirt on mutual acquaintances. I had such a person in mind, and heard his voice throughout. If you haven't such an acquaintance, or can't imagine one, you might find Burston's narrative over the top and just a bit tedious -- but then, so is my uninhibited acquaintance.

Martin, who "had always been considered fairly handsome (usually by straight women, admittedly)", is in his early thirties and believes he has an ideal life: a moderately well-paying job, a nice apartment and an attractive live-in boyfriend who shares expenses. One evening, Christopher, the live-in, does not show up for a dinner he had scheduled with Martin. After waiting awhile, Martin, thoroughly drunk, returns home to find that the dinner was a ruse to get him out of the house; Christopher is gone to live with his new love. With that, Martin's financial security evaporates, along with his emotional safety blanket.

Martin's first impulse is to call his best friend, Caroline, "a professional woman, the only woman in her family to have carved out any kind of decent life for herself, and she had the fat salary, the company car and the platinum American Express card to prove it." Fat and unattractive through her teen years, she has had virtually every part of her body massaged, relaxed, beaten or surgically enhanced into shape. Fate intervenes, however, when Martin realizes that Caroline has probably gone to bed. Instead, he calls John, a gay flight attendant, or "trolly dolly" in gay parlance, whom Burston portrays as the epitome of gay self-absorption, and malice. Had Martin reached Caroline first, the story might have taken a different direction. As it is, in his depressed state, he is vulnerable to John's less-than-sage advice, which is simply, to drown his sorrows in hedonism. What follows is a mad romp through the seven deadly sins, with an emphasis on gluttony in the form of sex and drugs.

Although Martin's plight is at the center of the story, Burston parallels it with Caroline's relationship with Graham, whom she suspects of being gay, and John's with Fernando, the Brazilian drug dealer. The three story-lines mingle, sit-com style: a medium-sized piece about one of the three main characters ends with a what-happens-then moment, and then switches to an episode with one of the other two. Burston uses a variety of writerly techniques to join the episodes, which help minimize the bumps that could easily detract from that particular style.

Caroline and Martin emerge as alter-egos, who, were they to sit down and have a long talk, could offer each other sensible advice, and probably save each other some of the headache they eventually endure. No doubt, Martin could have illuminated Caroline on the mysterious C.L.A.G. and saved her the embarrassment of "outing" Graham to his best friend from college. However, Burston cleverly keeps them apart until the seventeenth of nineteen chapters, after which, the story hurries to a satisfying, if slightly foreseeable, close, somewhat reminiscent of a morality play in which Everyman wins and the devil, in this case John, gets his due.

To fill out the story, Burston has a group of fully-developed supporting characters. Martin's would-be activist father adds comedy every time he appears. Among the gay characters are Neil, Martin's new roommate, who accidentally breaks the toilet by expelling two steel balls (you have to read it to believe it), David, a mooch who exchanges gossip for drugs and alcohol, and Ben, the sweet, if untidy, answer to Martin's woes.

No doubt, Londoners, particularly gay Londoners, will catch some inside jokes that the rest of of miss. Even so, I found "Shameless" to be a quick, very enjoyable read.

I have recently read SHAMELESS by Paul Burston. I think the book acurately documents the protagonist's, (Martin) journey into the wild and wickedly hedonistic world of club/drug culture, concluding with him managing to see the futility of the scene after being falsely lured in by the initial euphoria of the drugs. Some may accuse this book of glamorizing club-drug use, but I would have to disagree. Maybe it's just me, but I don't find someone's mistaking toenail shavings for coke and snorting it very glamorous, although I have to admit the author related the incident most humorously. I've been around more than enough to have known my fair share of characters like the ones in this book, and yes they were backstabbers and liars and cheats but they knew how to party and make you feel welcome. I know the special-tribe like lure of this scene quite well. I found the book honest and real, and I enjoyed how the author used humor to skewer, not glamorize, the entire scene.

Paul Burston's SHAMELESS, set in London, gets off to a funny start-- you will smile at least once on every page for awhile-- but then sort of peters out. The characters almost to a person are no one you would want to spend an evening with. I found myself liking the two straight characters Caroline and Graham most. I'm not sure what that says about me or about the author. In the beginning of this novel Martin is a thirty-two year old who hasn't spent as much time in the gym as practically every other gay man he knows, but he soon gets started on those pecs. Just having been left by a lover he throws himself madly into the gym/drug/sex/bar circuit as he surrounds himself with a drug dealer, his woman friend Caroline, his airline attendant friend John, basically obnoxious-- for my money, one reference to men with feminine pronouns is one too many; if John called someone "daughter" one more time, I thought I would be physically ill-- and other assorted sillies who do drugs, drugs and more drugs.

Some of these characters-- the action takes place in the now-- reminded me a little of those in Andrew Holleran's pre-AIDS novel DANCER FROM THE DANCE and Armistead Maupin's TALES OF THE CITY series. The difference, of course, at least regarding Maupin's characters, is that they are lovable, a term you wouldn't use to describe most of the cast here. When I goggled the author, I came across his list of favorite novels and found both of these two on that list. He also has the following quote: "I wanted to write the kind of novel I liked to read -- nothing too literary, quite light but with some serious points." Mr. Burston certainly has written something that we wouldn't by any stretch of the imagination classify as "literary." I'm not sure what serious points we are to take away from the novel unless it is that one really can OD on drugs if one puts nothing else into his body, that one should perhaps be a little more careful in choosing friends, that one should kick someone one picks up in a bar in the shins before taking him home in order to determine if he has an artifical limb and that one should make sure she deletes what she has written on her computer if it is something that her boss might fire her for if he read it.

What ultimately saves this novel, in spite of its thin plot and characters you care not a whit about-- and makes it as good as it is-- is both Mr. Burston's considerable humor and his ability to capture the essence of the way a lot of people act, regardless of their sexual persuasion. For example, gay business owners who are always looking for ways to "give back" to the community. As a friend of mine says, that usually is a warning to you to grab your billfold. Gay men who spend most of their waking hours in gyms invariably have "great pumped-up upper bodies supported on tiny twiglet legs." (Just go to any big city mall even in the dead of winter and you will see these types, usually in tank tops, often with spaghetti straps, and shorts.) Caroline endures bad sex with under-endowed men not by thinking of England but by "clinching for England." John compares sympathy to cocaine-- a substance he knows a lot about-- in that if one offers a little bit to someone, that person quickly comes back wanting more. He also adds inches to his computer profile (I don't mean in height). Parents don't ask gay children about their lives. (This quotation would sell T shirts). Often in gay bars you dance with someone who looks just like you. Boy George is a role model for "fat girls from the suburbs." As one gets older, one gradually grows into one's face. Martin sometimes washes his hair three times before summoning up enough courage to go out his apartment door. (I used to have a friend almost that bad.) And my favorite: Martin compares his attitude toward debt to Quentin Crisp's toward dust. "Once a certain amount piles up, you might as well ignore it completely because, relatively speaking, it doesn't get any worse."

A writer whom I like, Will Self, says that Burston in this novel "has penned the truth about gay London." We can only hope that there is another side of gay London that Mr. Burston ignores. I'd rate this novel a B- only because parts of it made me smile.

Martin, Caroline and John are the three central characters in this sly, irreverent, and totally contemporary farce that may leave some of the more conservative readers in shock. Their sex and drug fuelled escapades throughout inner city London are indeed "shameless" and their lives - full of soap-like drama - are without a doubt, hedonistic and almost dangerous. First published in England in 2001, Shameless is like a mini-gay expose on the lives of young, hip, urban groovers who obviously have lots of time on their hands. Author Paul Burston, with dead-on honesty and a cheeky wit, has his characters looking for love in all the wrong places while getting high on ecstasy, and coke, indulging in toilet sex, and contracting sexually transmitted diseases!

Martin has recently split with his boyfriend Christopher. His vacuous friend John has been trying to get Martin to have fun out the fast-paced London gay scene. Martin is a nice down to earth guy, who is reasonably good looking and has a job that he likes. But when Christopher leaves him, Martin's financial security evaporates along with his emotional safely blanket, and he's forced to rely much more on John, Caroline and his new roommate Neil. It doesn't help that Martin has an activist father who wants to celebrate gay pride with him. With his new age philosophy, his hippy ways, and his modern ideas, Martin reacts to him with a fond mixture of affection and embarrassment.

Caroline is Martin's best friend and confidant. She has a professional, high paying job, has a somewhat strained and awkward relationship with her mother, and recently suspects that her boyfriend, Graham might be gay. Caroline is also having a love affair with cocaine: "you can never have enough cocaine," she says merrily to Martin one night over dinner. Caroline and Martin's stories parallel throughout the narrative, as Martin hesitatingly gets caught up in the gay drug and party scene, and Caroline, sex starved and high on cocaine, turns to ex-boyfriends for sexual kicks. Of course, their escapades land them in all sorts of trouble as their paths gradually converge and they learn much from their experiences.

John represents the selfish, devilish aspect of the story. A gay, gossipy flight attendant, or "trolley dolly," John spends his time chasing after men with gym-built bodies, who have money and lots of drugs. And while he pretends to confess love to Fernando, the Brazilian drug dealer, he is also cruising the Internet and hooking up with men whenever he can. John is the epitome of gay self-absorption, narcissism, and wickedness - and Burston captures his character perfectly. A person like John doesn't particularly give Martin the best advice, which is simply, to drown his sorrows in hedonism, and Martin, feeling kind of vulnerable, doesn't really stop to think whether John is the right person to take advice from. Much hilarity follows, particularly when Martin starts taking men home, and somewhat inadvertently, gets caught up in the world of partying and one-night-stands.

The narrative effortlessly flows along, with sections of interior monologue doing a good job of highlighting the insecurities of each character. Cleverly switching back and forwards between storylines, Shameless - for some readers - may resemble a script for a gay sitcom, rather than a fully-fledged novel. But the story remains involving and there are lots of surprises that will keep readers entertained. This is a quick, enjoyable, and quite funny read that will appeal to a lot of people who are familiar with the urban, gay party scene in any big city. Mike Leonard January 05.