Oh, The Essential Bordertown. Talk about a book I need to track down. Love. So much love.
I like the very idea of gay romance novels -- there are, in fact, young, queer girls and boys who want to read romance novels about people like themselves, and can.
I was so delighted to come across a whole selection of gay YA romance--all by the same author, but still--at my local B&N, and to discover that they often had reasonably realistically happy endings. I'm just sad that there weren't more books like this.
Your analysis of the other book is interesting. I won't read it--can't handle rape scenes anymore--but I'd be interested to see what others have to say on the subject.
if one is trying to write a realistic book, one tries to make everything as real as possible -- and if one is writing a fantastical book, one tries to make things as real as possible so that the fantastical seems fantastical or ordinary, depending on the effects you're looking for, and if one is writing a romance novel in which reality is supposed to be consumed by, well, a romantical notion of how the world could or should be... then one should do that, and give us some closure at the end, for the love of Viggo.
Amen to that. I've been doing a lot of thinking about where the line between "realism" and everything else is, particularly as I find "realistic" novels generally depressing, but can't access fantastical or romantic stories--whether as novels or poems or fic--if there isn't some grounding in realism, which for me exists in the realm of character. But I'm intrigued by where that line is for others. What makes a novel "realistic" for Jane but not for Bob?
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I like the very idea of gay romance novels -- there are, in fact, young, queer girls and boys who want to read romance novels about people like themselves, and can.
I was so delighted to come across a whole selection of gay YA romance--all by the same author, but still--at my local B&N, and to discover that they often had reasonably realistically happy endings. I'm just sad that there weren't more books like this.
Your analysis of the other book is interesting. I won't read it--can't handle rape scenes anymore--but I'd be interested to see what others have to say on the subject.
if one is trying to write a realistic book, one tries to make everything as real as possible -- and if one is writing a fantastical book, one tries to make things as real as possible so that the fantastical seems fantastical or ordinary, depending on the effects you're looking for, and if one is writing a romance novel in which reality is supposed to be consumed by, well, a romantical notion of how the world could or should be... then one should do that, and give us some closure at the end, for the love of Viggo.
Amen to that. I've been doing a lot of thinking about where the line between "realism" and everything else is, particularly as I find "realistic" novels generally depressing, but can't access fantastical or romantic stories--whether as novels or poems or fic--if there isn't some grounding in realism, which for me exists in the realm of character. But I'm intrigued by where that line is for others. What makes a novel "realistic" for Jane but not for Bob?