Series: -
Volume: 1/1Publisher: MLR Press
Genre/s: Gay Romance / Erotica / Historical
Length: 73 000 words
Length: 73 000 words
Read in: English
Review copy format: pdf
Rate:✮✮✮✮✰✰
The 1980s:
Dario and Bobby are completely different from each other in almost every aspect. While the first of them is a confident Italian who discovered and fully accepted his sexual orientation already as a teenager, the latter is a rather calm Englishman, who still carefully hides his homosexuality. Frentana, a small Italian town, becomes the setting of their first meeting. From the very beginning of this encounter, their mutual attraction can't be denied. However, to let any feelings bloom, Bobby must finally embrace his sexuality and let the other man get closer to him.
If the walls of a house which is Bobby and Dario's meeting place could talk, they would surely tell us another touching love story as well. The one that began in the 1940s and which lead characters resemble Bobby and Dario not only because of their nationality.
Dario and Bobby are completely different from each other in almost every aspect. While the first of them is a confident Italian who discovered and fully accepted his sexual orientation already as a teenager, the latter is a rather calm Englishman, who still carefully hides his homosexuality. Frentana, a small Italian town, becomes the setting of their first meeting. From the very beginning of this encounter, their mutual attraction can't be denied. However, to let any feelings bloom, Bobby must finally embrace his sexuality and let the other man get closer to him.
If the walls of a house which is Bobby and Dario's meeting place could talk, they would surely tell us another touching love story as well. The one that began in the 1940s and which lead characters resemble Bobby and Dario not only because of their nationality.
"Pain and Promise" is a romance set in a historical background, in which case it seems quite important to mention that it is a story about the past to which the narrator returns, not the one that is taking shape before our eyes. In other words, the events we witness have already taken place and now they are being revived once again, which is clearly perceptible and marked in the narrative. As you can clearly guess, this novel is not filled with swift action, suspenseful events, great adventures. It is a rather slow burn story revolving around the characters' past, which arouses your interest and draws us in, but at a completely different level than many other books in which the future is created as we read it.
When we start reading "Pain and Promise", the first thing that really quickly strikes the eyes is the appearance of "time jumps", which are sometimes rather small, while other times they are much bigger. I think it should also be added that on the timeline we are moving both ways, forward – although the narrator introduces us to the story that refers to the past – and even further backwards. In short, it's hard to talk about the chronology of events here. It is indeed a controlled chaos, as we immediately see what purpose the author had in mind each time he decided to make the "time jump", but I must admit that it makes reading a bit difficult. We have to be focused and attentive all the time if we want to follow this story, rather than get lost in it.
Let me move on to the theme of a plot of "Pain and Promise". To tell you the truth, this is the novel about a journey, but not the physical one, but the inner, psychic, personal one. In his book, Lazlo Thorn presents the journey his characters take to find themselves, their sexual orientation, which starts with the first significant meetings, the first doubts. In a way, the author emphasizes the fact that every person is ready to accept and find oneself at the time which is right for them. However, the novel does not end there, as the further journey through one's sexuality and its exploration is equally important. And so the characters trudge through life, through meetings and breakups, through sex and love, up to the point when their story ends. And this journey is one of the most interesting and absorbing elements of "Pain and Promise".
At the end, I would like to add that in the novel I really liked the fact that the author in a very interesting and quite unexpected way showed that the life is somehow making circles, sometimes bigger and full of problems, sometimes smaller and free of obstacles, but at some point some events always return to the starting point. In "Pain and Promise" we can see the past that follows its own path, fills life with missed opportunities, interesting meetings, painful breakups and which in the end stays far behind, but still clearly affects the future and ultimately returns to remind us of itself. Lazlo Thorn presented all this in a truly fascinating and charming way, and thus made it undoubtedly the greatest advantage of this novel.
In summary, "Pain and Promise" is undoubtedly a book for people who like more serious stories about everyday life, in which the characters step by step try to find themselves and their way through life. This is a novel that, as the title suggests, refers to both pain and promise. I think it's really worth reading.
Headcanon: Bobby writes the memoirs in which he describes his sexual journey.
Fanfiction idea: Bobby and Dario meet after many years, they recall old times and talk about what happened in their life since their last letter.
AU idea: Dario is a prisoner of war and Bobby is a volunteer who helps in the prison.
Here's some more about:
Blurb
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Book Title: Pain and Promise
Author: Lazlo Thorn
Cover Artist: Melody Pond
Heat Rating: 4 flames
It is a standalone book
June, 1981: The small town of Frentana on the Adriatic coast of Italy was the last place Bobby would have suspected that his titanic struggle with being gay would come to a head. But then he hadn’t reckoned on the town’s evil secret weapon – Dario, a Michaelangelo man with a missionary zeal for sex with men and the tightest trousers that Bobby had ever set eyes on. But then Bobby wasn’t the first Englishman in that bright land where the olive trees grew, to be dazzled and beguiled by a local boy. For there was another love story that had yet to be told. A hidden affair separated from Bobby and Dario by almost forty years. An inspiring tale of a great war time romance between two very special young men and one with which Bobby would become strangely linked.
Excerpt
August, 1969
Florence, Italy
As the short, strong stranger drew level with Bobby, this young man, still engaged in deep conversation with his friends, nonchalantly reached down and pulled at the front of his trousers, as if scratching an itch in his groin. For a split-second, time seemed to freeze, and Bobby became lost in a moment of furtive fascination as this Florentine beauty continued touching and prodding himself between his legs. Then, in complete disregard for the very public place in which they stood, he suggestively adjusted the contents of his trousers, in much the same way a shopper in a supermarket might casually rummage in a heavy bag of vegetables.
The encounter lasted only a few seconds, and then the young blood and his equally attractive gang of friends were gone, leaving Bobby strangely crushed at the thought that this beautiful creature hadn’t even noticed he was there. The clock on the tower above his head struck eight, and time started up again. When Bobby glanced back at his family, his father was pointing enthusiastically toward the corner of the square where, having finally spotted their destination, they went on to spend a very enjoyable evening at the restaurant, and he thought no more about it.
Bobby found coming home to England after such a great holiday in Italy quite depressing, particularly when he realised that school would resume the following week. So once again, he turned his attention to more mundane matters like his unfinished holiday homework, and all too quickly, the glittering streets of Italy seemed just a distant memory.
Until that day when he made his bitter discovery.
It was early evening, not long after returning home. Alone in his bedroom, he gazed out of the window at their back garden. The red summer roses were dying back, and the rain was drizzling down. Why the memory came to him then, he wasn’t sure. Perhaps he heard the clock in the hallway downstairs chime eight. But come it did and, for whatever reason, he suddenly remembered the attractive young men in the street outside the restaurant in Florence. In particular, the one with the very tight trousers and the bulging fly. The one who couldn’t have been less like a girl. And then the penny dropped. He had been admiring a man, and, he suddenly realised, it hadn’t been the first time. These days, he was often looking at men that way and in particular at the contents of their trousers. Furthermore, when he thought about it, he always had. The picture by his bed, the rugby players in the park and the rough cowboys on television, and, yes, he was marvelling at men because he liked the look of them and the way they made him feel when he captured them in his sights. He wanted them. He had gazed at those men in the street back in Italy the way other boys at school or indeed his brother Charlie talked about looking at girls. So, there in the bedroom that evening at the end of the summer, staring into the back garden through the window, Bobby finally made the connection. A moment forever fixed in time. There was a name for this. He was a homosexual.
About the Author
Lazlo Thorn published his first novel (The Signal Box) in 2018. In his work he explores themes about life, death, love and sexuality, set against the social mores and prevailing attitudes to gay sex at different times and in different places. Pain and Promise is his second novel and takes the reader to a small town on the Adriatic coast of Italy where two love stories, separated by almost forty years, become linked in an unexpected way. The author has lived and worked in various countries and travelled widely in Europe and beyond. Today, he lives in England with his husband, in a quiet seaside town on the south coast.
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