reviews_and_ramblings | When You Don’t See Me by Timothy James Beck

The collaboration of the four authors who write under the pen-name of Timothy James Beck built a strange “New York” series: all the spectrum of gay experiences and this time was the time of the young adult, self-discovery journey of a young gay man dealing with the traumatic experience of the after 9/11.

At the beginning of the novel, the reader, or at least me, has the impression that Nick is older than he really is. He has a job, he is no more a student, he lives alone, better he shares a two rooms apartment with other three roommates, and he seems to have a whole lot of experience behind his shoulders… but little by little we discover another reality, Nick is only 19 years old, a drop out from college, and he has just left the safe shelter of his uncle Blaine’s posh apartment in lower Manhattan (Blaine and Daniel are the main characters of other two novels by Timothy James Beck, and supporting characters of all the others too). Nick’s story is not displayed up front for the reader, but we rebuild it piece by piece during the length of the book.

When he was only 16 years old, Nick decided to leave his homeland little country town to go live in the Big City with wealth and gay Uncle Blaine. From Nick’s perspective, it was the only choice he had to escape a life of harassment, it’s was not a dream comes true, but more a punishment… for the reader’s perspective, and also for Nick’s relatives in Eau Claire, it was like winning a lottery, Nick was going to live an artsy life in one of the most challenging cities in the world. It can be sound strange, knowing how big New York City is, but Nick was searching for a safe shelter, for a place where to hide in security, a place where him being gay, and an artist, was not an oddity that made him being pointed out in the street. New York City gave him the anonymity he desired, but also a new family to look after him, Blaine and his lover Daniel as step-fathers, and Gwendy and Gretchen (his mother’s cousins) as step-mothers. Nick had to renounce to his real family, but he was happy all the same.

9/11 destroyed his security and his new-found make-up family. Two years later the New York City which was his safe shelter is now a place full of scaring things, Nick is scared by the subway, by the skyscrapers, but the fact that everyone around him was in someway affected by that tragic event. And Nick has only a solution for that: running away another time, leaving behind all the people who love him, searching another safe shelter in the anonymity.

Maybe since the previous novels I read by these authors were basically romances, I was expecting also for this one to be, and I was probably expecting that Nick’s solution to his troubles would have been to find love. And instead this is a classical self-discovery journey, and the solution is not to find the courage inside someone else, but inside you. And so yes, Nick has relationships, and some of them are also quite nice, made me wonder if it wouldn’t have been nice for them to developed in something more, but in the end, they were not the turning point of the story. Before being able to really fall in love, Nick has to learn that running away it’s not the way to resolve your trouble.

Amazon: When You Don't See Me

Amazon Kindle: When You Don't See Me

Series:
1) It Had to Be You: http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/744800.html
2) He's the One: http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/628689.html
3) I'm Your Man
4) Someone Like You
5) When You Don't See Me

The Rainbow Awards: Third (and last!) Phase: http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/850354.html