I Am Not Raymond Wallace

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He soon discovers his elusive boss, Bukowski, is being covertly blackmailed by an estranged wife, and that he himself is to assist the straight-laced Doty on an article about the ‘explosion of overt homosexuality’ in the city. As my self a gay boy growing up in the early 60's and knowing it at the age of 6, I could relate to SO MUCH of what was going on in this book made this THE story that i will NEVER ever forget, nor will I forget Raymond Wallace. PLEASE NOTE: From 1st of July 2021, shipments from the UK to EU countries will be subject to Value Added Tax (VAT) charges. I’d already spotted Sam Kenyon’s I Am Not Raymond Wallace in the schedules when it was pitched to me for review, struck by its blurb. As his bursary draws to a close, he’s faced with a choice which we know from the start he will regret.

This in no way makes me more likely to give the book a glowing review because when we used to sit together in school orchestra, he was quite annoying. Opening in 1963, it follows a Cambridge undergraduate, fresh out of college, who’s won a three-month bursary at The New York Times and meets the love of his life. It is against this recontextualization that Sam Kenyon has written his debut novel, I am not Raymond Wallace, a story about closeted cis men set largely in 1963. This history cannot be forgotten by younger generations, just like forgetting that abortion was once illegal and resulted in many tragedies (oh yeah, that's changed hasn't it). The decision he makes will ricochet destructively through lives and decades until―in another time, another city; in Paris, 2003―Raymond’s son Joe finally meets Joey.Raymond is assigned to Doty, a journalist who has piece planned on the ‘overt homosexuality’ which apparently has New York in its grip. He’s told to go undercover, tasked with providing Doty with salacious details for the piece, something which both unsettles and excites him as he wrestles with a sexuality which has been kept firmly buttoned up. It reminds us how bad things were for LGBT+ people within living memory - and indeed continue to be in many countries around the world.

The romance is pretty much doomed from the beginning, given that in 1963 homosexuality is still the love that dare not say its name. So begins a relationship which sees Raymond becoming part of a family very different from his own at home in Britain. When he stumbles upon a bar which fits Doty’s bill, Raymond meets Joey, handsome, self-assured and comfortable with himself, who takes him home. When Raymond takes this 'job' and is told that he needs more 'appropriate for the times' clothing to fit in to the group that he is going to be doing undercover writing for; he has no idea that he is going to fall in love whole heartedly for the first time in his life with the young man at the clothier. The rest of his life will be spent yearning for the love he found in New York, later writing about the pain of loss and repression.It tells important history of what it was like to be homosexual in the 1950s and 1960s - fear of losing job, being blackmailed, thought to be sick, etc, etc.

I Am not Raymond Wallace is a multi-stranded story of queer redemption spanning multiple generations, told with precision-tooled prose, sharply-imagined settings and compassionately-observed characterisation. He serendipitously gets into a bar that requires a secret knock and meets Joey and feels a very strong attachment.

There's a kind of sad, dark, depressive ambiance suffusing much of the book, even though in both the historical and modern section there are gay men who accept themselves and live lives full of people, fun, art (but not mostly lasting relationships). Raymond Wallace, a recent graduate of Cambridge of age 21, arrives in NYC in the summer of 1963 for a 3-month internship with the NY Times. The sex scenes are quite frank, so I couldn't give it to my 88 year old mother, but if you're OK with those, I would recommend it and I look forward to any future novels. The poignancy of Raymond’s story is neatly balanced by Joey’s and by Joe, able to live his life openly gay in contrast to his father. Witty, touching and hopeful, it’s an absorbing novel which ends with a sentence that brought tears to my eyes.