The Summer Gardener by Jan Irving

If you think that fairies (and yes, I’m talking about the real thing, the little fae people with colourful wings) are charming and pretty, you haven’t yet met Fane; fine is little, barely nine inches tall, but he doesn’t like to be called pretty, and for sure he uses his charm only on who he likes, and he doesn’t like many people. He is the guardian of a garden, and he allows inside it only gardener he likes, and lucky Alejo, Fane likes him.

Alejo is a big but gentle man, young and innocent, yes, innocent as virgin; from a very traditional Spanish family, he is not the man of it, meaning that he has to provide for his mother and little brother; he does it working a construction job on winter and as gardener on summer, even if being a gardener was his true dream. Now he has no money to continue his landscaping studies, and he nurtures his love for plants nurturing the garden. Fane understands that Alejo is better than the other humans, nearer to nature, and so he almost forces the big man to become his friend, and something more.

It’s really funny to see how a little thing like Fane can be bossy and domineering of bigger Alejo, and he can probably do that since Alejo is not really an imposing man; sometime I had even the impression that Alejo is too much mite and quite, but it was in his character and probably the only way for Fane to convince him, a straight boy, that in the Fae world there is no gender, no distinction between men and women, and you love who you like and not who you have to.

It’s a strange contemporary world the one in which this story is set; a world where there is Starbucks and Barbie (otherwise where Fane would have found his late ’70 furniture), but where fairies are pretty common, and live among people, in the garden, and no one seems to find it strange. It was so normal that after a bit, even the reader found it ordinary, and the love story between the nine inches fairy and the big gardener was right, even if not ordinary.

I really like as the author let the reader understood of Fane different nature, the little details that gave you the idea that Fane was indeed little, but that were so natural that didn’t feel strange. Even if Fane is a otherworldly creature, in this little story he was only another man in love, a man who can feel loneliness and also pain, normally an immortal creature, but if you wound him, he bleeds like everyone else. Basically the story is light, but there is a subdued bittersweet undertone that mixes well with the plot.

http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=1579

Amazon Kindle: The Summer Gardener

Reading List:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bottom.php?tag=reading_list&view=elisa.rolle


Cover Art by Dan Skinner

The Summer Gardener by Jan Irving

If you think that fairies (and yes, I’m talking about the real thing, the little fae people with colourful wings) are charming and pretty, you haven’t yet met Fane; fine is little, barely nine inches tall, but he doesn’t like to be called pretty, and for sure he uses his charm only on who he likes, and he doesn’t like many people. He is the guardian of a garden, and he allows inside it only gardener he likes, and lucky Alejo, Fane likes him.

Alejo is a big but gentle man, young and innocent, yes, innocent as virgin; from a very traditional Spanish family, he is not the man of it, meaning that he has to provide for his mother and little brother; he does it working a construction job on winter and as gardener on summer, even if being a gardener was his true dream. Now he has no money to continue his landscaping studies, and he nurtures his love for plants nurturing the garden. Fane understands that Alejo is better than the other humans, nearer to nature, and so he almost forces the big man to become his friend, and something more.

It’s really funny to see how a little thing like Fane can be bossy and domineering of bigger Alejo, and he can probably do that since Alejo is not really an imposing man; sometime I had even the impression that Alejo is too much mite and quite, but it was in his character and probably the only way for Fane to convince him, a straight boy, that in the Fae world there is no gender, no distinction between men and women, and you love who you like and not who you have to.

It’s a strange contemporary world the one in which this story is set; a world where there is Starbucks and Barbie (otherwise where Fane would have found his late ’70 furniture), but where fairies are pretty common, and live among people, in the garden, and no one seems to find it strange. It was so normal that after a bit, even the reader found it ordinary, and the love story between the nine inches fairy and the big gardener was right, even if not ordinary.

I really like as the author let the reader understood of Fane different nature, the little details that gave you the idea that Fane was indeed little, but that were so natural that didn’t feel strange. Even if Fane is a otherworldly creature, in this little story he was only another man in love, a man who can feel loneliness and also pain, normally an immortal creature, but if you wound him, he bleeds like everyone else. Basically the story is light, but there is a subdued bittersweet undertone that mixes well with the plot.

http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=1579

Amazon Kindle: The Summer Gardener

Reading List:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bottom.php?tag=reading_list&view=elisa.rolle


Cover Art by Dan Skinner

Best Gay Historical (2° place): Lovers' Knot by Donald L. Hardy

Also Best Characters (3° place), Best Overall Gay Fiction (3° place)

Lover’s Knot is probably one of the best Gay Historical romance I have ever read, in the tradition of the classic romance, where explicit sex is an option, but sensuality and romanticism are a must.

At the beginning of the novel we meet Williams and Langsford-Knight; old college mates that after decided to share a room in London for convenience while both of them got settled in the city; and now, 9 years later, they are still together. Together like friends, obviously, they well know that anything else would be a ruin, and they don’t dare; they fear so much for the well-being of each other, that no one of them has ever had the courage to speak aloud their respective feelings, and so they guess, but they actually don’t know if what they bear is an unrequited love or not. Even if their friendship is lasting for almost 14 years now, their relationship has still the feeling of what you can find among college students, or convinced bachelors, and even if this story is set at the beginning of the XX century (1906), they still maintain the old fashioned way, calling themselves with their last name, and not with their first name. And here the “convenience” and custom, and maybe the need to maintain a certain distance, is quite clear, since the reader knows, and read, that Jonathan Williams, is not new to being in love with another man, and when he was young, before meeting Langsford, he was in love with Nat, a farmhand in his cousin’s property where Jonathan was spending the summer before college; with Nat, Jonathan was at first name relationship, he was Jonny for Nat, and with Nat he was daring and carelessness.

For this reason, and for other little details, the reader at the beginning wondered how was possible that a love so big, and ended in a tragic way (Nat died at the end of the summer, falling of a cliff), was so easy forgotten by Williams, that, for his own words, fallen almost immediately in love with Langsford at their first meeting in college. But little by little the reader understands that there was something not said between Jonathan and Nat, the memories Jonathan has are of course not happy, but it’s not the sadness to remember a lost lover; and it’s also clear that what happened prevents him to be happy with Langsford.

Happiness with Langsford that indeed seems easy and reachable, they are like a well oiled couple, Langsford knowing all Williams idiosyncrasies, and Williams covering for Langsford’s forgetfulness; Williams is serious and quiet, where Langsford is a friendly and charming. They are like night and day, but at the same time they are the same. When Langsford realized that Williams’s inheritance of the farm in Cornwall will bring his friend far from him, he understands that it’s time to speak his feelings; otherwise he will loose Williams forever. I think that, being them already a couple, in everything if not by law and in bed, Langsford would have been happy to stay like that forever; only the thought of losing Williams is pushing him to change that course, probably thinking that a bond of love would be stronger than friendship and a way to not have to renounce to the man that he is already considering his soul mate.



http://www.perseusbooksgroup.com/runningpress/book_detail.jsp?isbn=0762436859

Amazon: Lovers' Knot: An M/M Romance

Amazon Kindle: Lovers' Knot: An M/M Romance

Reading List:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bottom.php?tag=reading_list&view=elisa.rolle


Cover Art by Larry Rostant

Best Gay Historical (2° place): Lovers' Knot by Donald L. Hardy

Also Best Characters (3° place), Best Overall Gay Fiction (3° place)

Lover’s Knot is probably one of the best Gay Historical romance I have ever read, in the tradition of the classic romance, where explicit sex is an option, but sensuality and romanticism are a must.

At the beginning of the novel we meet Williams and Langsford-Knight; old college mates that after decided to share a room in London for convenience while both of them got settled in the city; and now, 9 years later, they are still together. Together like friends, obviously, they well know that anything else would be a ruin, and they don’t dare; they fear so much for the well-being of each other, that no one of them has ever had the courage to speak aloud their respective feelings, and so they guess, but they actually don’t know if what they bear is an unrequited love or not. Even if their friendship is lasting for almost 14 years now, their relationship has still the feeling of what you can find among college students, or convinced bachelors, and even if this story is set at the beginning of the XX century (1906), they still maintain the old fashioned way, calling themselves with their last name, and not with their first name. And here the “convenience” and custom, and maybe the need to maintain a certain distance, is quite clear, since the reader knows, and read, that Jonathan Williams, is not new to being in love with another man, and when he was young, before meeting Langsford, he was in love with Nat, a farmhand in his cousin’s property where Jonathan was spending the summer before college; with Nat, Jonathan was at first name relationship, he was Jonny for Nat, and with Nat he was daring and carelessness.

For this reason, and for other little details, the reader at the beginning wondered how was possible that a love so big, and ended in a tragic way (Nat died at the end of the summer, falling of a cliff), was so easy forgotten by Williams, that, for his own words, fallen almost immediately in love with Langsford at their first meeting in college. But little by little the reader understands that there was something not said between Jonathan and Nat, the memories Jonathan has are of course not happy, but it’s not the sadness to remember a lost lover; and it’s also clear that what happened prevents him to be happy with Langsford.

Happiness with Langsford that indeed seems easy and reachable, they are like a well oiled couple, Langsford knowing all Williams idiosyncrasies, and Williams covering for Langsford’s forgetfulness; Williams is serious and quiet, where Langsford is a friendly and charming. They are like night and day, but at the same time they are the same. When Langsford realized that Williams’s inheritance of the farm in Cornwall will bring his friend far from him, he understands that it’s time to speak his feelings; otherwise he will loose Williams forever. I think that, being them already a couple, in everything if not by law and in bed, Langsford would have been happy to stay like that forever; only the thought of losing Williams is pushing him to change that course, probably thinking that a bond of love would be stronger than friendship and a way to not have to renounce to the man that he is already considering his soul mate.



http://www.perseusbooksgroup.com/runningpress/book_detail.jsp?isbn=0762436859

Amazon: Lovers' Knot: An M/M Romance

Amazon Kindle: Lovers' Knot: An M/M Romance

Reading List:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bottom.php?tag=reading_list&view=elisa.rolle


Cover Art by Larry Rostant