Customer Reviews

When Love Comes to Town

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4 star:		(1)
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It's not that this is a love story kind of romantic novel. It's more like a wonderfully sensitive story of Neil Byrne, just graduated, just turned 18 in search of love. The kind of love he can dig his fingers into, feel, and return in full measure. Set in Dublin Ireland one witnesses the close-knit family life of Dubliners, from their happy moments to the moments that tear them apart. Neil's search for love and acceptance puts him on the outside looking in with his school mates, his siblings, his best friend, all "rhyming couplets" while Neil is different and vacilates between fitting in and going his own way into Dublin's gay night life. Here he sees both the sad and the promise of something happy for himself. He meets Shane, a beautiful man, who might be the love Neil is searching for. Something odd: author Tom Lennon chooses to become vague during the novel's crisis moments when Neil "comes out" to his friends, family, when he is gay bashed, and near the end when... well I can't relate what happens. This is the kind of book that draws you in immediately and keeps you spellbound and rooting for the main character. Lennon's true ability is to make you feel what the sensitive Neil feels in both his wins and losses. The truly romantic will love this book. The jaded and cynical will probably not. After all, it's a coming out story, set in Ireland, from the point of view of a teenager. The story is sometimes funny, sometimes sad, but always interesting and in many ways insightful. Ronald L. Donaghe is the author of Uncle Sean.

Neil Byrne's biggest problem is how to keep both sides of his life apart. At school is a good student and the talented rugby player. He has quite a few friends, but very few long-term girlfriends. That isn't to say there is nobody at school he wants today to date. There is. In fact, Neil has even written some poems that describe how he feels. The only problem is, "Does Ian feel the same?" Being afraid of rejection, Neil decides to stay silent. Instead, he begins to go

out and become apart of Dublin's gay nightlife. He meets the usual suspects: the solicitous older man, transvestites, and queens. He also meets Shane whom he hopes will be his one true love. In the end, he trades one problem for another. The world inhabited by his created family turns out to be just as stifling and insecure as the world inhabited by those he loves at home. In the end, he discovers that true love is literally just around the corner. This is a sad and funny book that traces a young man's search for love despite the obstacles created by his family and the bar culture of which he is a part.

Neil, a young lad in Ireland, struggles to live truthfully as a gay youth while pretending with his parents and friends that he's just one of the guys. He slowly becomes involved in Dublin's gay community, and meets another guy who's a few years older, but before anything can happen, Neil is attacked by gay-bashers. After recovering, Neil finds that dating is difficult, especially when he's hiding so much, and the relationship sours. Neil comes out to his parents and friends, and finds some support, but everything changes, some for the worse and some for the better. This amazing coming out story does end with hope and a possibility for a connection to combat the loneliness of living as a gay man in a small town. Like Stuart Thorogood's "Outcast" and K. M. Soehnlein's "The World of Normal Boys", Lennon's book is a potent, poignant tale of what it's like being young and gay.

Neil Byrne is a popular Irish school guy coming up to is eighteenth birthday, a star rugby player, school prize winner, and always in demand. But he bears a heavy secret which, despite the fact that virtually all his straight friends are paired off and his remains single, no one suspects; he is gay. He has known this since the age of ten, but has so far been able to conceal the fact through his masculine attributes and successes, including a brief flirtation with a girl. He has secretly fallen for a younger lad at school, the beautiful blue-eyed blond guy with the cute behind, Ian.
Finally no longer to able to contain himself he confess his sexuality, but only to his closest friends, and then is encouraged to venture into the gay bars of Dublin. He meets a new group of friends including a benevolent Sugar Daddy, and Shane, a handsome older guy of twenty five with whom he starts a relationship. But is Shane all he seems to be, and is he to be trusted? Yet all appears to be going reasonably well until Neil can no longer live with deceiving his parents, and eventually comes out to them with catastrophic results.
Who will Neil be able to turn now, and can he rely on anyone? Throughout all his troubles he is plagued with doubts, and often sees suicide as an answer, is that now his only recourse?
However Ian is never far from his thoughts, but he does not even know if Ian is gay.
I found this an involving and enjoyable story, with a satisfying and very moving conclusion. The writing is interesting, especially when at times we see events from Neil's perspective, as if we are following events as his mind rapidly flits from one thought to another. Recommended.

I really enjoyed reading Tom Lennon's novel about an 18 year old Irish boy who just happens to be gay. Tom Lennon has a beautiful style, full of subtle details and he is excellent in building his characters. Around the main hero, there evolve a dozen of other characters all portrayed under the light of truth. Tom Lennon has a way to pay justice to everyone even to Mother and Father who love their son in their own way, as it the case with millions of parents of gay adlolescents. I believe this is a novel of literary value, much above the average of the common gay themed novels and that it should be read not only by young gays and adults but also by all parents who know or suspect that their son is gay. Reading this fine novel, they will probably get an insight into the turmoils of growing up with the idea of belonging to a minority group and that coming to terns with one's own reality has to shatter or put into trial (test) the relationship with any kind of authroty in the pyramid of love.