Bitch, Read! #3: Full Circle

Michael Thomas Ford is nothing if not prolific and unafraid to explore new genres. He's offered humorous essays (Alec Baldwin Doesn't Love Me), erotic tales (Tangled Sheets), do-it-yourself instructions (Ultimate Gay Sex) and absorbing gay novels (Looking for It). Without intending to, I've read a great deal of Ford, and though I've never had a problem with his work, it is not until now that I felt he achieved something truly great.

I'm referring to his latest novel Full Circle, but in a way I feel like it's almost a disservice to call it "latest" as though this novel were even in the same league as the others. Again, it sounds like a backhanded compliment, but it's not intended to be. Imagine if you suddenly found out that you found out the author of your favorite pulpy romance novels also had written one of the best books you ever read in college.

And in another way, calling it the "latest" is quite accurate because Ford has taken the soapy gay romance and fun surprises in plot that made books like Looking for It so much fun and added an immensely evolved charting of the course of the latter half of the twentieth century. I was hooked on the story of Ned and Jack — next-door neighbors whose childhood friendship blossoms into love in the 1950s and 1960s. Up through their high school years, I thought of the work as a portrait of a very complicated gay relationship peppered with wonderful cultural references — space launche, Beatlemania, etc. But once the boys ship off the college, where they meet militant Black Panthers, go to parties awash in pot and acid and then face the threat of the Vietnam draft, I realized that this was an attempt at a Great American Novel.

And the attempt, for the most part, succeeds terrifically. The book uses the springboard of these two characters (and their college-acquired buddy, sexpot Andy) to tell the story of Gay history. I feel like I learned so much - about Vietnam, the dawn of the gay rights era in San Francisco, the first strike of the AIDS crisis and the rising tide of protest that fought against it. In many ways, it is a quintessential expression of the gay experience in the latter half of the twentieth century and I would recommend it to anyone.

Oh, and, yeah, there's some pretty arousing sexual content in there, too. And the fact that the novel apart from it is so engrossing as its own thing that every time the sex comes around it's a surprise - well that makes it even more of a sexy treat. I can't help but hope that for his next work, Ford doesn't bother so much with the sexual specifics. Yes, they're like chocolate truffles on top of an already decadent dessert. But when the cake is this good, you don't need too much frosting.