Call Me

by P.P. Hartnett and P.-P. Hartnett

When Liam decides to begin answering the personal ads of London's gay papers, he is at first bemused and fascinated. After all, it is simply a way to entertain himself and pass the time. What Liam... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312180632
• ISBN13: 9780312180638
• Release Date: December 1997
• Publisher: St. Martins Press-3PL
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Dark Allegory

P-P Hartnett's novel CALL ME will live forever as a document of erotic emancipation, spreading the ecumenical spirit of impersonal and anonymous sex to all parts of Southern England, from Clerkenwell to Wapping. The hero is Liam, a photographer with a powerful sex urge and a deep melancholy who is trying desperately to get over the pull of his former boyfriend, Ray. Almost accidentally he begins to answer personal ads in the gay papers like TIME OUT. As an American reader, I didn't realize that the "small ads" must have some kind of sex connotation to them, the kind that "personal" evokes here in the USA (so this bok can be recommended for broadening one's vocabulary as well). It's been three years since Ray, and soon Liam finds himself in bed with a strapping young boy called Jack. Sex rears its head and suddenly Liam realizes ehat a fool he's been all these years, wasting his time mourning a man who, perhaps, never really loved him any more than his nicely decorated apartment or collection of Pet Shop Boys CDs, no matter how gleamingly polished, did or do. He takes out his camera and begins to photograph Jack's sleeping head, shoulders, ass. You'd think he was happy but shortly afterwards, another day, the temptation to answer another ad seizes him. And then it begins, the endless addiction to sex in the papers. Hartnett clearly has been intimate with a lot of men, and in addition Liam exhibits a keen interest in Dennis Nilsen, the gay serial killer whom some have compared to the USA's Jeffrey Dahmer (who apparently counted Nilsen as one of his role models). I'm not sure what's going on with this aspect of the novel, but whatever it's doing, it works. Those of you who love London for its seediness and for the availablity of every kind of man on its sex underground, will nod in recognition as you find yourselves portrayed in this book, as though in Huysmans' dark mirror. Hartnett has written other books, all of them to be recommended in one way or another, but this is the best of them yet.

Worth it

_Call Me_ is not a quick, lighthearted book to read, but it has depth and power. Liam's struggle is to grieve the loss of his lover without knowing how. The invention of Bike Boy and all his subsequent activities to me were painfully obvious attempts at keeping grief at bay: all of it seems designed to keep moving, keep talking, keep diverted, do anything except authentically mourn his loss.I thought Hartnett wrote a strong, moving novel about struggling, confused people. I doubt it will ever be a movie of the week starring Brandy, but that's only one of its selling points.