Safe As Houses: A Novel
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.53 (760 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0571198600 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 364 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 0000-00-00 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Allen Pasztory, the hearing son of two deaf parents, struggles for a sense of self and family with a view to his Hungarian immigrant heritage, chronic illness, his lover Jeremy, Jeremy's son Toby, and his own nephew, Kit.
"Great read" according to Kassa. Safe as Houses was originally published in 1995 but is now rereleased through Lethe Press. I've heard of this book mentioned here and there but never picked up the title until I read Alan Chin's rave review of the released title. So I was surprised that I struggled to get through the beginning and wanted to give up many times, likely would have walked away if the book wasn't for review. Yet I found myself totally absorbed and immersed in the second half of the book. If I hadn't continued, I would have missed a moving, emotional story that by turns surprises and delights. Safe as Houses is not always an easy book to read with de. A beautifully written, wonderful book Robert Elgie Alex Jeffers' wonderful book is an idyll, perhaps a fantasy, certainly a 'blast of the trumpet' against the family values folks who cling to the stale notion that only mixed-gender households can know love or raise well-adjusted kids.A fantasy, perhaps, because how many families are as happy and communicative as this one? How many sixteen-year-old boys remain affectionate friends of their dads? But it's not impossible, I suppose, and even the possibility that somewhere such families may exist is something to celebrate.An idyll, because as Allen battles AIDS (we learn that he's got KS on page two), he chooses for the sporadic jo. A wonderful, lyrical tale of life, love, and family. Alex Jeffers has written a wonderful, lyrical taleof life, love, and family. The themes of the book -- deafness, gay parenthood, and illness -- are interwoven with a quiet, warm story about two men struggling to build a faimly in a world which does not acknowledge their right to parenthood. Through the eyes of Allen, we watch his father and mother, both deaf, struggle to survive in a world which does not wish to accomodate them. Once Allen has grown up and moved away from home, he meets Jeremy, a tall, handsome man who is raising his son alone. Together, Jeremy and Allen strive too raise and protect Jeremy's son.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. Despite his perceptive prose, Jeffers skirts his characters' hopes and the paradoxes of their lives rather than risking a fuller exploration of the tenuous safety that they find in love. A hearing child of deaf parents, Allen enjoyed comfort and seclusion in his early family life, an experience that he tries to re-establish in the new family he is creating. From Publishers Weekly The title of Jeffers's first novel underscores the fragile attempt of its protagonist, Allen Pasztory, a gay admissions officer at a Rhode Island prep school, to make a home for himself, his