Top 100 Gay Novel: The Phoenix by Ruth Sims

[reviews_and_ramblings]

This was one of the first historical gay romances I read, well if you don’t consider Maurice by E.M. Forster, and I still remember the impression it left me. I decided to re-read it now, since I had my print copy, and again, I’m surprise at how daring this romance is, while maintaining the feeling of a classic. Even if the two men in this romance behave accordingly to their age and period, they are lovers, and it’s clear to the reader that there is passion, and lust, between them. The reader is not left there wondering, they did it or they didn’t?, but instead he is well aware that to the eyes of the majority of people, these men are sinners, but to their own eyes, they are simple in love, a love that doesn’t know space or time barriers.

In the best tradition of the English classic literature, see Tom Jones or Oliver Twist or Molly Flanders, our main hero, Kit St. Denys, despite the fancy name and the fashionable career as actor and theatre owner, has a obscure past as pickpocket and a tragedy that still haunts him. He was lucky, and he was “adopted” by a wealthy man without sons who made him his official heir; benefactor was gay, as Kit is, but they never went beyond the relationship between father and son, and indeed, maybe Kit has a good role model from whom learn how a nineteen century gay man should behave. But Kit’s reckless nature, and maybe his strong will, prevents him to be one another closeted gay man with a wife in the country and a male lover in the city, and he decides to live his life in the open, maybe helped in that from the notorious scandalous life of an actor and the money he inherited by his patron.

Problem is that Kit falls in love for Nicholas Stuart, a country boy who was raised in a very strict family; Nicholas already rebelled to his father becoming a “modern” doctor, going to college and opening a practice in the city. He is already sinning, at least at the eyes of his father, and so when Kit bursts into his life he is yet another sin to add to the list. And Nicholas sins, and sins again, and he enjoys it, but he is never free from the sense of guilty and the need to be forgiven; any small sign he receives it is like a sign leading him far from Kit, and far from the happiness he finds with him. Nicholas can’t be happy, since that life is a forbidden fruit, Kit is the luscious apple tempting him.

Nicholas will do everything to punish himself, and life will help him; and Kit will do everything to not allow Nicholas to forget who is the real love of his life. This I like of Kit, he is never repentant, at least not for the sin of loving a man; Kit has plenty of sense of guilty, but loving Nicholas is not one more sin to add to the list, since for Kit loving is not a sin.

The happiness for these two men will not come for free, and that is yet another point I liked: this novel has a some sort of happily ever after, their punishment will not be to be apart from each other, but they will have to renounce to something; in the end, to understand if they really have an happily ever after, you need to balance what they lost and what they found, and deciding the importance of both.

http://lethepressbooks.com/gay.htm#sims-the-phoenix

Amazon: The Phoenix

Amazon Kindle: The Phoenix

Ruth Sims's In the Spotlight post: http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/754133.html

Comments

Speechless

[ruth-sims.livejournal.com]

I am by nature seldom speechless. But Elisa, you have taken me completely unawares with this marvelous review. When a book has been out for some time, as The Phoenix has, an author just doesn't expect to find a new, insightful, 5-star review waiting to be discovered. As always, you understand the characters as well as I do. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Ruth

Re: Speechless

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

You are welcome Ruth, I told you sooner or later I would have arrived to re-read The Phoenix.

[aileenfan.livejournal.com]

Amazing review:) It was also one of my first m/m stories and I absolutely loved it. It was hard to buy it here but the story was so worth it!!!

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

I hope with Lethe press edition it will be easier to find it.