LGBTQA Group Books discussion

Final thoughts go here. Also, if you want to tackle some of the discussion questions at the end of the book, create a new topic within this folder, and title it "Discussion Question # "insert here the question number found in the book." I didn't want to read the questions yet cause they usually assume you've read the whole book by that point.

This was my second time reading this novel, and some parts are still a puzzle to me, especially the character of Anthony MacMurrough. Are we to embrace him as the "pedophile with a heart of gold?" O'Neill seems to be suggesting MacMurrough is experiencing some form of Easter season redemption as he rescues Doyler, counsels the 2 boys like an old-auntie matchmaker, and then vaguely heads off to war to prove his manhood and defend the family name. It struck me as a hard-to-believe transformation for a person who in the early chapters was a cynical devotee of Oscar Wilde, thumbing his nose at middle-class morality.
The dual death at the conclusion -- one immediate, the other foreshadowed for a few years into the future -- still affected me deeply, a final gritty end to a book that depicts vividly a harsh time and place in history. I would love to see a film version of this book if handled with subtlety. The visual imagery could be overwhelming.

I didn't necessarily have a problem with MacMurrough, but then I believe the boys were 16 or 17 so they were more or less adults.

My general thoughts: I thought that it was beautifully written, but also very slow and painful. Like many gay history books, I ended it with the overall sense that my life is pointless, that failure is inevitable, and that gay and lesbian people do not deserve love. Perhaps it's true, but I'm a bit tired of having it jammed down my throat.