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Author: Eric Page

REVIEW: Moonlight: Blue Ray: Barry Jenkins

Posted on by Eric Page

Moonlight

iTunes and Blue Ray & DVD.

Barry Jenkins

Starring Trevante Rhodes, André Holland and Janelle Monáe. The story is divided into three different timelines, each focusing on Chiron – played by all the actors at different stages in his life. As a child, Chiron is nicknamed ‘Little’ because of his diminutive size and shy demeanour. He struggles with his mother and her addictions,  bullying at school and becomes involved with a drug dealer.

As he begins to explore his sexuality, Chiron grows into his teenage years and becomes a more resilient adult, but the travails of his upbringing and the experiences of his younger years may never truly leave him. The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards, winning for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay.  It’s a superb study of an alternative narrative of black male gayness and also of the tenderness of hope and love in a life getting off to a wrong start and then through learning, guidance and hope ending up, secure  in the arms of love.

Out now.

BOOK REVIEW: Pride and Joy: A guide for lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans parents by Sarah and Rachel Hagger-Holt

Posted on by Eric Page

Pride and Joy: A guide for lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans parents

Sarah and Rachel Hagger-Holt

There have always been lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans parents. But now there is a ‘gayby boom’. Changes in social attitudes, the law and medical technology mean that more LGBT people are becoming parents, and living proud and open family lives. Yet there are still few role models.

Pride and Joy is full of stories, advice and real-life experience from LGBT parents and their children. Sometimes funny, sometimes moving, sometimes surprising, every story sheds new light on what it’s like for LGBT people raising children in the UK and Ireland today.  All of them constructive, healthy and superbly loving families filled with honest appraisal and love.

Pride and Joy is positive and practical. Its inclusive and see’s things from a LGBT perspective, It covers everything from starting a family, dealing with schools, talking with children about different families, and maintaining an LGBT identity as a parent. The Hagger-Holt’s have done some serious research and interviews to ensure this book covers just about every aspect of LGBT* parenting, their consideration and breadth of experience shines through this book and the authors ability to condense and reflect complex ideas in an easy digestible way gives this book a clarity and simplicity of approach which allows the joy of parenting to stay the focus, and good parenting to be the aim.

This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to better understand issues facing LGBT families including parents or prospective parents; extended families and friends; and social workers, teachers and other professionals.  Superb.

Paperback

Out Now £11.99

For more info or to buy this book see the publishers website here: 

BOOK REVIEW: Spartacus: International Gay Guide 2017

Posted on by Eric Page

Spartacus

International Gay Guide 2017

Spartacus is the gay travel bible − the bestselling and most comprehensive travel guide for gay men. This 46th edition features 21,000 addresses for 130 countries worldwide. So many gay facts! Hotels, clubs, bars, beaches, saunas, sex venues or the local gay information centre − you will find all this and plenty of local advice and insights into the local scene, the country, the people and up to date places to eat, shop or chat.

The listing describes each country in an extensive introductory text, including unique and important ( if you’re new to the place) cultural issues. Importantly, it offers information about the legal situation and safety for gays and lesbians in each of the countries listed in the guide, sourced from foreign embassies and LGBT+ activists/organizations around the world. The editorial team undertake extensive research to ensure the information is as reliable and up-to-date as possible.

Here’s their ‘shooting the cover’ gratuitous topless model video…

Published by the Bruno Gmunder with their usual attention to quality and detail, it’s an excellent research and travel resource. All in all it’s the physical guide for LGBT+ folks traveling our wonderful rainbow planet. Book includes full access to their on-line listing and the app.

Out now £14.99

Paperback

To buy the book or for more information see the publishers website here: 

BOOK REVIEW: Our own private universe by Robin Talley

Posted on by Eric Page

Our own private universe

Robin Talley

Talley has given us a well-balanced and nuanced book about a young Lesbian/queer women growing up, having her first crush and that leading to some serious thoughts about how and what she may be/ is.

The main character Aki gives us the answer, by experimenting, exploring, researching and learning from anywhere and everyone you can. When you already know what you’re not – straight- how do you define what you are! Aki’s theory is that she’s only got one shot at living an interesting life-and that means she’s got to stop sitting around and thinking so much. It’s time for her to actually do something. Or at least try.So when Aki and her friend Lori set off on a trip to a small Mexican town for the summer, and Aki meets Christa-slightly-older, far-more-experienced-it seems her theory is prime for the testing.

The characters in this fun book explore the changes that a summer fling brings to them, as they navigate the social and mental horrors of a Christian summer camp and the bigotry, small mindedness and occasional huge bursts of generous unconditional love surrounding them. They argue, love and talk about what it is they are doing and the prose mirrors their own blossoming into young adults who are as socially aware as they are sexually naïve.

Talley has given us a young queer coming of age book about some real young women and their developing lives and loves’ that’s sensitive, honest and utterly charming.

Out Now, paperback £7.99

For more info or to buy the book see the publishers website here: 

BOOK REVIEW: My brother and his brother by Hakan Linquist

Posted on by Eric Page

My Brother and his Brother

Hakan Linquist

This novel is about two brothers. The story is told by one of them, Jonas, an 18-year old boy. Throughout his teenage years he has been trying to get an image of Paul, the brother he never met, a brother who died at the age of 16, the year before Jonas himself was born. There are photo’s and things of his left, kept by their family, hidden away, shadowed with shame and some unspoken family secrets. He finds things written in an unknown language, and people his father seems unhappy for him to have contact with, friends of his brother.  It’s a story of delicate complexity, a story of discovery, both of past and possible futures.

It’s phrased like a crime story, with loose ends, clues and cliff hangers. In his search for his brother, Jonas soon finds out that Paul had an intense love affair with another boy during the last year of his life. It is a detective story. What led to the death of the protagonist’s brother, Paul, why did he stand on the railway track when the train was coming. So many answers and this book explores the effects of grief on a family when a possible suicide takes place, the shattering and breaking that happens.  With a curious sense of the ‘now’ pervading a book which appears to be all about the ‘then’ the narrative tension builds in a completely unexpected way. There are many reflections for Jonas’s own life in the slowly uncovered and revealed glimpses of that of his brother’s before him.

First published in Sweden in 1993, translated in 2002 to French,  and now available in English in a radiant and limpid translation by the author himself.  A short novel with only six main characters, its richness teases the reader’s mind long after closing its covers. Linquist is a serious writer but with a lightness of touch which brings his complex interwoven stories alive, the ending turns in an unexpected direction, ultimately satisfying and worth the read.

Out now £10.99

For more info or to buy the book see the publishers website here: 

BOOK REVIEW: Insomniac City by Bill Hayes

Posted on by Eric Page

Insomniac City

Bill Hayes

Bill Hayes came to New York City in 2009 with a one-way ticket and only the vaguest idea of how he would get by. But, at forty-eight years old, having spent decades in San Francisco, he craved change. Grieving over the death of his partner, he quickly discovered the profound consolations of the city’s incessant rhythms, the sight of the Empire State Building against the night sky, and New Yorkers themselves, kindred souls that Hayes, a lifelong insomniac, encountered on late-night strolls with his camera.

And he unexpectedly fell in love again, with his friend and neighbour, the writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks, whose exuberance–“I don’t so much fear death as I do wasting life,” he tells Hayes early on–is captured in funny and touching vignettes throughout. What emerges is a portrait of Sacks at his most personal and endearing, from falling in love for the first time at age seventy-five to facing illness and death. Insomniac City is both a meditation on grief and a celebration of life and a profound, life affirming celebration of the wonder of love, unexpected, un-invited and overwhelmingly beautiful love. Filled with Hayes’s distinctive street photos of everyday New Yorkers, the book is a love song to the city and to all who have felt the particular magic and solace it offers.

The final chapter of the book  touched me deeply and I left the book slowly, with dignity feeling like I’d like to live and die half as well as Sacks and experience a love just as simple, clear and true and experience it with such honest relish as has Hayes.

A superb, touching and affirming read!

Out Now £16.99

For more info or to buy the book see the publishers website here. 

BOOK REVIEW: Meg & Linus: Hanna Nowinski

Posted on by Eric Page

Meg & Linus

Hanna Nowinski

This month’s LGBTQ young adult pick is superb. Can friendship, Star Trek, drama club, and a whole lot of coffee get two nerdy best friends through the beginning of their senior year of high school?

Meg and Linus are best friends bound by a shared love of school, a coffee obsession, and being queer. It’s not always easy to be the nerdy lesbian or gay kid in a suburban town. But they have each other, and a few Star Trek box sets. They’re pretty happy.

But then Sophia, Meg’s long-time girlfriend, breaks up with Meg. Linus starts tutoring the totally dreamy new kid, Danny—and Meg thinks setting them up is the perfect project to distract herself from her own heartbreak. But Linus isn’t so sure Danny even likes guys, and maybe Sophia isn’t quite as out of the picture as Meg thought she was.

Nowinski’s narrative which alternates between the perspectives of passionate, anxious, chubby gay nerd Linus, who has a desperate secret crush on barista Danny, and his similarly nerdy and theatre-loving best friend, Meg is a fun friendship story about two quirky teens who must learn to get out of their comfort zones and take risks, even if that means joining the drama club, making new friends, and learning how to stand on your own.

Out now, £15. Hardback

For more info or to buy the book see the publisher website here: 

 

BOOK REVIEW: Pages for Her: Sylvia Brownrig

Posted on by Eric Page

Pages for Her

Sylvia Brownrig

What happens to the love of your life if you’ve lived most of your life without her?

Pages for Her is the story of two women, Flannery and Anne, each at a personal turning point, and the circumstances that lead to their reunion. Twenty years after their passionate affair, chronicled in Brownrigg’s earlier novel Pages for You, Flannery has the chance once again to meet Anne, who opened young Flannery up to the possibility of love—then left her heartbroken.

Having long ago put their love behind them, they live now on opposite coasts. When the two women meet at a conference, they find that the passion and understanding between them has endured, though it has been hidden. In rediscovering each other, they are able to rediscover themselves. This beautiful book is a soft, pure and very gentle exercise on the nature of love and how time can erode the reasons we give ourselves for not allowing it to blossom and remove the barriers of status, experience and comprehension by sharing them out equally.

Pages for Her is an exhilarating, passionate work that explores marriage, sexuality, and the transformative power of love over time and the way two women face the slow burning truth of their lives, their relationships and the utter delight of honest ownership of powerful experiences and truth,  it’s also  Brownrigg’s sequel to her 2001 novel, Pages for You – taking the same two people, but this time looking at things from a different persons perspective and though the honest lens of time. 

This book left me touched and aching to read its predecessor, it shows the development of love and understanding as life moves on and how women learn to accept, empower and inspire the people around them.  Pure summer delight!

For more info or to buy the book see the publishers website here: 

PREVIEW: All You Need is Love: Shanni Collins

Posted on by Eric Page

Local author Shanni Collins celebrates publication of her new and updated inclusive book for families at Waterstones in Brighton city centre on June 2.

Families come in different shapes and sizes, but they are all special when they love and respect each other.

These fun rhyming stories encourage inclusion and acceptance in a child’s relationships and are a celebration of the diversity of families.

By promoting diversity and understanding in family life and elsewhere, these stories support a positive approach to life at a young age, which fosters strong mental health and well-being.

Each page is dedicated to a different family, with stories exploring adoption, fostering, disability, race, gender and illness.

Filled with humour and delightfully illustrated, children will love reading this book again and again with friends, family and in school.

To read the Gscene review of Shanni’s earlier version of All you need is Love, click here:

The illustrations in this new hardback book are a delight, colourful and engaging with a supporting article from a famous child physiologist about the important of inclusive and positive role models for our children, us and our future.

Collins’s Brighton launch is the next glorious rainbow step to provide young people with books which affirm their own lives and those of the people around them

Shanni, long time Brighton resident is next off to Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau, Cardiff in Wales to promote the book on the next leg of her national tour!

For more details of Cardiff launch, click here:

For more information or to buy the book: click here:

All You Need is Love: Celebrating Families of All Shapes and Sizes

Shanni Collins. Price £10.99

Book Launch

BRIGHTON FRINGE REVIEW: Arr’ we there yet? Head First Acrobats

Posted on by Eric Page

Arr’ we there yet?

Head First Acrobats

Bosco Tent

Brighton Fringe

Head First Acrobats style is defined by their unique mix of old school slapstick comedy, with new-school death-defying acrobatics. A scallywag pirate, a muscular sailor and a chef with a seafood allergy make for a hopeless crew, as they fight for the title of Captain aboard the ship. These acrobatic pirates turn ship-life upside down!

If you’ve ever seen them then you know what they do, and they’ve adapted their  impressive skills to suit both adult evening shows and this fun kids show.  Swashbuckling daftness abound with some delightful daft tango’ing with mops as they swabbing the decks, climbing the rigging on an unsupported ladder, the never-gets-dull huge metal ring work which I’ve seen four times this festival and is still utterly impressive and jumping, flipping, spinning, head standing and  strong and impressive feats of balance and gymnastics.

They  ‘click’ these lads and that level of fun and accomplishment carries across into the apparently scatter-brained daftness of the show, but like all things in the circus, nothing is quite what it seems and these boys are a smooth talented polished trio who know exactly what they are doing and engage on every level with adult and most importantly the kids to ensure everyone enjoys themselves fully.  There was plenty of fun audience participation, shouting out and interaction with the younger member of the audience.

I winced at the £2 twisted balloon cutlasses swords that the kids were queuing to get from the performers outside after the show particularly as our little one Tilly’s – popped very soon after (nothing to do with the quality of the balloon, twisting or show I hasten to add), but these Pirates are so charming you forgive them their lust for gold. As charming as they are deft their infectious energetic acts brought everyone to their feet and the young ones left thrilled by this trio of wonderfully funny, impressively fit and agile trio of young performers.

If you missed them at the fringe then you’ll get a chance to see them in their various guise at the Worthing Summer of Circus, and I would strongly recommend you get out to catch one of their shows.

For full details of their Summer of Circus show, click here:

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