Bernard Jan's Blog - Posts Tagged "coming-out"

A Christmas Outing by Jonathan Hill

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I happened to be on a tram on my morning ride to work when David's mother rip-opens the parcel her daughter has sent as a gift from Australia and pulls out of it a vibrating pink penis with a gift-tag around it. David stares open-mouthed at the sight of it, his boyfriend Jamie drops the remains of the biscuit he is eating in his lap, David's dad is laughing. David's mother looks from her husband to penis and from penis to her husband and asks, confused, “What . . . What is it?!” This propels David's dad into an even louder laughter, which is followed by a sudden blare of rap music ringtone from his phone he still doesn't know how to turn off.

At this point David is really annoyed at his futile attempts and all distraction. It is all too much for him so he yells: “I’m gay and I’m going out with Jamie and I love hiiiiiiiiim!” This scene is an ultimate climax of a hilariously funny novella A Christmas Outing by Jonathan Hill.

It is Christmas market time and 19-year-old David is going to visit it with his parents. This time, though, his boyfriend Jamie is coming along. David has something very important to announce to his parents tonight and Jamie is there to support him. Coming out to his parents is too complicated and not easy at all and Jamie is going to be there to be by his side and help him in any way he can.

A Christmas Outing is teeming with funny scenes and brilliant and comic dialogues of one dysfunctional family which is trying to survive Christmas time. A dominating mother and a submissive father who keep arguing about every little thing (sounds familiar, anybody?!), David's Psycho Sister who fled as far away as possible from her family and who sends sex stuff as gifts to her parents – her mom especially, and David who is the whole evening laboriously plotting a plan to admit to his parents that he is different, that he has a boyfriend, so he can be accepted and be himself more than he ever was.

Jonathan Hill is a master of building a suspense and expectation around David's coming out. He makes us smile, giggle, snort and laugh from one situation to another throughout this whole heartwarming and honest comedy short story that will make everybody feel good despite the serious issue of coming out which it covers in order for everyone who is and feel different to become recognized and labeled within the set and acknowledged categories of our society. His characters are very functional, realistic and alive, and we have certainly met their real-life versions at some point in our lives.

After Not Just a Boy, A Christmas Outing is another smashing success by Jonathan Hill I had luck and pleasure of reading. My pleasure would be even greater if I didn't have to suppress funny sounds that were threatening to burst out of me in a hysterical laughter in a tram full of people when David from the screen of my smartphone mused: My sister is on the other side of the world, in a different time zone and season and still she manages to piss on the bonfire I haven’t yet lit.

Wonderful, simply wonderful!! Five grins as big and shiny as five stars!

BJ
www.bernardjan.com

p.s. Jonathan, maybe I should come out and admit that I fell in love with your writing?! (Here comes another big grin which you can see only with your mind's eye!)



View all my reviews
Bernard Jan

I have been dreading this decision and postponing it for as long as I could—for months, almost a year. Or even more? I cannot tell for certain, really don't remember. It was like a nightmare and I was pushing it away—the further the better—but time has come to acknowledge the inevitable. I have had the water up to my neck; no, up to my mouth!, and with each time breathing in a fraction of truth was exhaled.

My closest friends already know about it, and now I am officially sharing it with everyone. After so much struggle and resistance, I am coming out as—indie author!

Probably this spring, in summer at latest (that is the plan) I will publish my first novella A World Without Color in English. Correction: self-publish! Still hard to accept the thought that I am actually doing it. I have a plan and a time-table, but I am not setting any deadlines for I do not want to put too much pressure on my shoulders. Any day will be a good day for A World Without Color to face the world, with no expectations and only gratitude.

I have translated A World Without Color a few years ago; I have even submitted it to agencies and publishers. But I have decided to give it a final go with it independently while I will keep searching for a literary agent for my novels Cruel Summer and January River.

The self-publishing process started more intensely in February this year when I tried to gather all, or as much as possible, information on how to do it. While I am still learning and asking dozens of questions to my fellow indie authors, I think one of the toughest parts is conquered.

Unlike other indie authors, I have started a reversed process, meaning with gathering information on how to handle my royalty payments from the books sold online, that is abroad. The beginning was a shocker because it felt like banging my head against the wall of ignorance, various information and even more questions that arose during the time. Thanks to many people from Croatia and abroad I talked to, my greatest concern is now settled. At least, I want to think so. But the bitter aftertaste of conducting an international business within Croatian borders keeps polluting the back of my mind like an unwanted alien presence.

Leaving it up to time to handle it, once more I remind myself how things have changed in the course of time of the past twenty years. Writers' and authors' job is not only to make stories and write books any more but also to evolve to a top-skilled self-publishing magicians. Because self-publishing is not easy, make no mistake about that. Publishing (and then marketing and selling) your first book will suck the life out of you and sometimes be a traumatizing experience. You would want to pull out your hair, smash things or just give up everything. But once you are past that thunderstorm of emotions and exhaustion, you will see the sunrise of a day and hear the ticking of the clock counting hours until the cover of your most precious e-book smiles back at you from the vastness of the Internet.

I will conclude this blog post with my admiration and respect to all self-published and indie authors who took pain, shed sweat and hard-labored their way to become both high-skilled and professional authors and publishers. I know how much you loved your books to go through all this and I hope and wish you will be rewarded through your book selling, excellent reviews and the growing number of your readers and followers.

More updates to come, so please stay tuned!

BJ
www.bernardjan.com

Join my mailing list, subscribe to blog Muse!

Pride by Jonathan Hill

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


What do you remember most from your first Pride? Are you still making plans for your first Pride? Or you think it is all just a bunch of crap wrapped up in the glittering human rights propaganda?

To teenage boy Liam his first Gay Pride march is everything. Not even traveling by himself to another town and lying to his parents can prevent him to attend it. Because Liam reached the point when he accepted himself for who he was and now he seeks the acceptance of others too.

But is he ready to accept the dire consequences of his actions and coming out to another teenage boy, a stranger to him? Can he embrace the pain and guilt of a caterpillar spreading its rainbow-colored wings as a new butterfly?

Tender is the way and splashed with the right dose of humor with which Jonathan Hill makes us to befriend and love the characters in his novella Pride. It’s a brutally honest and beautifully realistic story which begs for your attention. In other words, a must-read!

Bernard Jan
www.bernardjan.com

Bernard Jan



View all my reviews

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Holding one Simon in your hand and watching another fixated on the big screen. Can it be any better than that?

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli is everything a young adult coming-out novel should be. Adorable, engaging, entertaining, real. It’s a real story (don’t confuse it with a true story) of young Simon who leads two lives: a real-time life in which Simon keeps his huge secret from his family, his friends, and everyone in school until he is blackmailed and his secret is threatened to be revealed; and his virtual life in which, under his alias Jacques, he emails with a teenage gay boy hidden under the pen name Blue. In his online life with Blue everything is easier for Simon, even to come out to him, a stranger.

If anything of that sounds familiar to you, you will with no difficulty relate with Simon and Blue as they confide in each other and develop their flirtatious relationship into a sweet addiction when Simon can no longer get Blue out of his head and starts looking for him among his high-school friends determined to meet him.

I took a reversed order of watching the movie Love, Simon before reading the book, so I didn’t have the usual fears of the movie butchering the book (as it is too often the case) but rather something extraordinary happened. Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger wrote such a great screenplay and Nick Robinson and the rest of the cast gave amazing performances, so the story of Simon and his friends was screened into a bit different and special experience! Some of the scenes are rewritten and made more dynamic, some characters altered and turned more charismatic, while the highlight of Simon’s secret about to be revealed and Simon being forced to face his big coming out is portrayed with more passion, excitement and movie drama.

The “motion picture” Simon is a fantastic addition to the “literary” Simon! Each of them gives us their perspective of how difficult it is for a young boy to accept his true feelings and sexuality and tell others about it. Maybe to understand why it is so hard we shouldn’t look in someone’s (in)ability to admit the truth to themselves and others but rather in a society which makes such a big deal out of it and makes it so hard.

Both Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda and Love, Simon offer us an excellent insight of the young Simon’s inner turmoil, coming out drama and restrained feelings. They will make us appreciate his struggle and determination to find his love with tears, passion and outburst of our own emotions.

Bernard Jan
www.bernardjan.com

Bernard Jan



View all my reviews

Jay Bird by Thomas Grant Bruso

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I don’t know why I’ve been waiting to read some of Thomas Grant Bruso’s work. If I was waiting for a perfect moment, I can’t say it arrived because there are still over a hundred books on my to read list. Either way, it doesn’t feel fair; it doesn’t feel right. The moment I read the few first pages of Jay Bird, I knew I’d like the story and I knew I’d like Thomas’ style.

Jay Bird is a beautiful and tender story of two adolescent boys, Jay and Rocco, who are best friends in becoming something more, whose friendship is tested with personal dramas and trials and teenage doubts, desires and needs.

With a strong dose of realism and credibility, Thomas Grant Bruso portrays a relationship between Jay and Rocco, but also between Jay and his parents and in particular with his Grams. As someone who has experienced a similar relationship with his grandma, I could identify with Jay’s relationship with his Grams and reminiscent about my childhood and juvenile days with nostalgia.

Jay Bird has the charm of a young adult and coming out story which wins your heart in a flash. Despite the publisher’s warning that this book is for adult audience only, because it may contain sexually explicit scenes and graphic language offensive to some readers, I suggest to even more sensitive readers to give it a try. Because nothing in this book is more sexually explicit or has a more graphic language than what we see or hear in everyday media, on social networks or in the circle of our friends and even with family members.

In the end I want to point out Thomas Grant Bruso’s strongest weapon. And that is his dialogues. Dialogues between his protagonists pull us with their fluency through the story, making it a fast and easy read. With their richness, humor and intelligence they give us the feeling they are the only thing needed to make us experience and love this book. Even if stripped of all other descriptions, Jay Bird would be an entertaining and worthy read because of their strength and power to make us devour them with a sweet aftertaste in our mouth.

BJ
www.bernardjan.com
Bernard Jan



View all my reviews