I Am Not Raymond Wallace

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Joey is the opposite, accepted by a father who doesn’t understand his son’s inclinations but adores him regardless, welcoming Raymond into his family.

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. It reminds us how bad things were for LGBT+ people within living memory - and indeed continue to be in many countries around the world. PLEASE NOTE: From 1st of July 2021, shipments from the UK to EU countries will be subject to Value Added Tax (VAT) charges. I couldn't put this book down, I had to make myself when I had things to do, otherwise I would have sat in one place until I finished it. year old Raymond Wallace is going to Cambridge University and is sent to New York for a 3 month internship at the New York Times, and he has no idea that he is gay.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). Manhattan, 1963: weeks before the assassination of President Kennedy, fresh-faced Raymond Wallace lands in the New York Times newsroom on a three-month bursary from Cambridge University.

Like so many men of his time and of his kind, Raymond faces a choice between conformity, courage and compartmentalisation. 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. 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.

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. There are some lovely major and minor characters - I particularly liked Dolores of the major characters and of the minor characters, Joshua (thrilled to be immortalised) and Sonia (70 but still sure of her sex appeal). A "historical" novel that starts in 1963 with some looks back and an epilogue that is set in modern times. What continues for the rest of the 300 plus pages of this debut novel has got to be the most beautifully written account of a 21 year old mans 'Sexual Awakenings' as I have ever read. Although I needed to take a break during the Paris visit, and I wiped tears from my eyes more than once, it was a beautiful story crafted artfully.

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. 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. He’s told to wait for Dolores, the editor’s secretary, who sizes him up before introducing him to Bukowski, her boss.

And the way that gay men of the time, under the pressure of all that, tended towards hot, furtive, anonymous sex with strangers. Witty, touching and hopeful, it’s an absorbing novel which ends with a sentence that brought tears to my eyes.

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. In part two which is set in 2003 and starts two thirds of the way through the book - some of the characters use 'letters' to communicate with other people to continue the narrative.I feel that if you enjoyed books like Lie with Me or Swimming in the Dark (two of my absolute favourite books) you'll also love this book.