Redfern Jon Barrett's The Giddy Death of the Gays and the Strange Demise of the Straights was published by Lethe Press in May 2015.
Information about Redfern Jon Barrett:
Redfern Jon Barrett is a writer and polyamory rights campaigner armed with a doctorate in literature. Author of The Giddy Death of the Gays & the Strange Demise of Straights and Forget Yourself (Lethe Press, 2016), his works have exhibited in seven countries and been translated into five languages. His writing has featured in PinkNews, A cappella Zoo (and its tenth anniversary "best of" edition), Strange Horizons, Heiresses of Russ: The Year's Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction 2014, as well as Shaped by Time (National Museum of Denmark, 2012). He currently works with Guernica magazine as a fiction reader, dividing his time between Britain and Berlin, where he lives with his two partners and plays too many board games.
Click here to visit his official website.
Information about The Giddy Death of the Gays and the Strange Demise of the Straights:
Caroline and her Dom live out their normal lives amongst the poverty, alcoholics, and street preachers of Swansea, Wales. But when Dom and his straight roommate fall in love - a passionate, secret, non-sexual love - their lives are transformed into a queer chaos of cross-dressing, gender bending and free love. Will Dom hold on to his relationship? Can religious fundamentalists be adopted as pets? And just what are The Lesbians up to? The battle between preachers and drag queens, skinheads and sex workers, boyfriend and girlfriend, is set to change the city forever.
A REVIEW OF REDFERN JON BARRETT'S THE GIDDY DEATH OF THE GAYS AND THE STRANGE DEMISE OF THE STRAIGHTS
Redfern Jon Barrett's The Giddy Death of the Gays and the Strange Demise of the Straights is a genderqueer humour novel with speculative fiction elements. It gives a wonderfully witty treatment to sexual and social norms by means of clever humour and fluent storytelling. It's a fascinatingly bold and original vision of change, acceptance, love and sexuality.
Before I write more about this novel and its contents, I think that a word of warning may be in order:
It's possible that The Giddy Death of the Gays and the Strange Demise of the Straights may not be to everyone's liking. If you're not open-minded and acceptive about various themes and issues related to human sexuality, this novel may be quite a shocking and eye-opening reading experience for you. However, if you're open-minded and acceptive of other people and their sexuality and don't judge anyone, you'll most likely enjoy this witty story very much, because it's something unique.
To understand certain things in this novel, it's good to know what the term genderqueer means. It's a catch-all category for gender identities that are not exclusively masculine or feminine - identities which are thus outside of the gender binary and cisnormativity. (More comprehensive information about this term can easily be found on the internet.)
The Giddy Death of the Gays and the Strange Demise of the Straights is a combination of literary fiction and humorous fiction with LGBT and speculative fiction elements. It's a memorable and thought-provoking glimpse into various relationships ranging from heterosexual relationships to homosexual relationships.
Here's a bit of information about the story:
The events in this novel take place in Swansea, Wales. At the beginning of the story, a nightclub called Skyline burns down and all of the characters - Richard, Rutti, Dom and Caroline - witness it. When Caroline sees the fire, she suddenly has a feeling that something terrible is coming and nothing can be done to stop it... Richard and Rutti used to live together for a time, but Richard has lost his patience with Rutti and has evicted him. Dom and Caroline date happily and seem to love each other. When Dom moves into Richard's house and becomes his housemate, they begin to spend a lot of time together and get to know each other. After a while, they gradually begin to fall in love with each other...
This gradually unfolding story is partially speculative fiction, because parts of it take place in the future. The chapters that take place in the future allow readers to see what has happened to the characters and how things have changed. They provide a fascinating contrast to the other chapters.
The story is told through four different and well-portrayed characters:
- Caroline is a geography postgraduate who works as a bartender at the Tail and Tugboat. She has a boyfriend, Dom.
- Richard is a bit of a geek and likes tech stuff. He works at Customer Support and has another job in the Shelter charity shop. He doesn't have a girlfriend.
- Rutti is a gay man who works as a perfume seller. He uses such words as hir and zie. He lived with Richard, but was evicted from his house.
- Dom is Richard's housemate. He has had a girlfriend, but now he dates and loves Caroline. He's a math postgraduate.
I like the way Redfern Jon Barrett writes about these characters and their lives. He makes them realistic and interesting, because they deal with their own problems and feelings. They're not plastic characters cut out from modern Hollywood films and bland TV series.
Redfern Jon Barrett fluently navigates between the different relationships and examines how they interlink with each other. The various feelings and tensions between the characters are handled excellently from different perspectives, because each of the characters feels differently about what's going on around them.
The author exlores such issues as sexual attraction, monogamy, homophobia and romance in a surprisingly insightful and interesting way and avoids preachiness. He writes about these things as they are and lets everything develop naturally without unnecessary hurry.
The author's way of writing about sexuality is characteristic to independent speculative fiction (and also bizarro fiction). I've noticed that independent speculative fiction gives authors quite an effective tool to explore sexuality, because it allows them to write about it insightfully and intelligently without trying to please everyone.
The relationship between Richard and Dom is handled exceptionally well. The author's approach to a gradually developing love between two men feels believable and realistic, because he effortlessly develops the relationship from the first awkward feelings to a full relationship and focuses on writing about the characters' feelings. Richard and Dom's deep bromance-like relationship is interesting, because they love each other and they have to deal with their own feelings and think about their sexual identities.
It was interesting to read about how Dom's girlfriend, Caroline, reacted to the news about his relationship with Richard. Caroline's feelings and actions felt realistic and believable, because she found out that Dom loves Richard, but doesn't have sex with him.
I also enjoyed reading about Rutti, because the author had given him a unique voice. It was amusing - and at times also touching - to read about how he felt about different things and other people, because the author wrote well about his feelings and life.
Rutti's way of interacting with Chris, the Christian fundamelist, is one of the highlights of this novel. To him, Chris is like a pet that needs feeding and taking care of, because he invites Chris to stay with him and his friend, Stephanie, who's a lesbian.
This novel has a nice touch of British humour. Because I've always had a fascination for sharp and observant British humour, I liked the author's sense of humour and found it intriguing.
This novel will appeal to readers who are familiar with works by such authors as Joe Keenan, David Sedaris, Stephen Fry and Armistead Maupin. Because of all the humorous and slightly twisted elements, this novel feels almost like a fresh take on Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City novels with a touch of speculative fiction. I think it's possible that readers who enjoy reading Margaret Atwood will find this novel interesting, because the author exhibits a few signs of Atwoodian kind of storytelling.
There's a strongly beating human heart at the core of this novel, because its message can be encapsulated by saying that regardless of our gender or sexuality, we're all entitled to hope, love, respect and happiness. There's also unflinching honesty in this novel that I found refreshing.
Redfern Jon Barrett is a good and talented author who writes fluent prose. He has his own unique voice, and he writes about difficult themes and issues in a bold and unflinching way.
Redfern Jon Barrett's The Giddy Death of the Gays and the Strange Demise of the Straights is one of the wittiest and most thought-provoking novels I've ever read. I like the author's direct approach to sexuality, because he writes boldly about various aspects related to sexuality and doesn't judge how people live their lives. If you enjoy reading stories about relationships, please take a look at this witty novel and give it a try, because it's something different.