Frank M. Robinson (1926–2014)

This is a very tricky book to review, because it was published posthumously, and so can't quite be judged by ordinary standards. It's also a gay-themed book, and so has special appeal to me. In both of those regards it's somewhat similar to Timothy Conigrave's Holding the Man. However, the difference is that whereas Holding the Man benefits from the immediacy of a raw, sparingly edited text, this memoir is less emotive and so not as well served by the warts and all prose.

Nevertheless, Robinson's qualities as a writer of page turners are evident in the rapid flow of the events he recounts and he manages to write about a huge number of years with frankness and clarity. The book really captures the essence of each decade it covers, or at least the essence of the part of society Robinson was engaged in during that time, and so is an important artefact of gay history. This seems to have been Robinson's primary intention in writing the book, and one he doubtless achieved, but it is somewhat of a shame that he didn't have time to engage a good editor and turn this into the coherent reflection that it really deserves to be.… (more)