Yanking Up the Yo-yo

By Michael Carson

Book Overview

The third and final novel in the Benson saga, following on from "Stripping Penguins Bare". Gay Martin Benson flies to the US to work as a counsellor at a boys' summer camp. When this job ends in... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 055299524X
• ISBN13: 9780552995245
• Release Date: March 1993
• Publisher: Transworld Publishers Ltd
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Our unlikely hero Benson finally makes good

1967, and Martin Benson of Sucking Sherbet Lemons and Stripping Penguins Bare has now completed his second year at Aberystwyth University where he is now President of the Overseas Students' Society, and is on his way to the States for the summer vacation, breaking his journey for a short stop with a Korean student friend in New York. He is all set with a job as a counsellor at a summer camp for boys, but while he gets off to a good start, not everything goes according to plan, and he is soon out of a job, and back in New York seeking new employment. His first job proves physically very hard, and although Benson adapts to it, he is soon applying for another job at the recommendation of Pablo, a young Filipino who picked him up at the cinema. In addition to his Filipino friend Benson makes a number of other friends including Dexter, and intense young student; Virginia, a young negro prostitute of questionable sex; Father Patrick, a gay priest; and Carlton, a striking negro in his thirties. Benson's active, imaginative and wandering mind continues to plague him, and he is constantly judging and assessing himself. His very Englishness, his politeness, humility, inhibitions and reserve make him something of an exotic creature to the American. However the experiences he gathers along the way eventually lead to liberation from some of the many hang-ups that have plagued him for so long. While Benson has been virtually celibate for the last year or more, he is of course still seeking the "One", or "Dearest Him" as he is now designated, each new acquaintance seems a possible candidate, which only confuses Benson the more especially as they all seem to come at once, and then when he thinks he may actually have found "Dearest Him", unexpected and unwanted news threatens to ruin all his hopes. This is a very fitting conclusion the Benson story, he finally begins to mature and make sense of much of the advice and wisdom that has been thrown at him, and discard the not so helpful. While Benson seems and unlikely hero, his appeal surely comes from the fact that, much as we may not want to admit it, we can see some little part of ourselves somewhere in his character. I found the final outcome very satisfying.