‘Queer’ pleasure...
This Valentine’s Day we bring some LGBTQ love stories, rather than the usual boy-meets-girl romances
A Married Woman
Author: Manju Kapoor
Astha has everything an educated, middle class Delhi woman could ask for children, a dutiful loving husband and comfortable surroundings. When she embarks on a powerfully physical relationship with a much younger woman, she risks losing the acquisitions of her conventional marriage. A Married Woman is the story of an artist whose canvas challenges the constraints of middle-class existence.
Funny Boy
Author: Shyam Selvadurai
Arjie is a ‘funny boy’ who prefers dressing as a girl. This novel follows the life of his family through Arjie’s eyes as he struggles to come to terms both with his own homosexuality and with the racism of the society in which he lives. In the north of Sri Lanka there’s a war going on between the army and the Tamil Tigers, and gradually it begins to encroach on the family’s comfortable life. Sporadic acts of violence flare into full-scale riots and lead, ultimately, to tragedy.
The Boyfriend
Author: R Raj Rao
One Saturday morning in late 1992, Yudi, a 40 something gay journalist, picks up a 19-year-old Dalit boy in the Churchgate loo. After hurried sex, he gets rid of the boy, afraid that he may be a hustler. Chance brings the two together again, and this time they spend a week as a married couple in Yudi’s flat, take a holiday, and meet for beer every Friday, till the boy, Milind Mahadik, disappears (he has been hired by a modeling-cumcall-boy agency owned by the Bollywood star Ajay Kapur, a closet bisexual). Desolate, Yudi finds solace in the company of the middle-aged painter Gauri. When Milind resurfaces, it is only to marry a girl chosen by his parents. But all is not lost: in straitened circumstances after marriage, Milind pays his gentleman friend a visit and stays the night. Henceforth, mutual need — Yudi’s for love and Milind’s for money — will keep bringing them together.
When Katie Met Cassidy
Author: Camille Perri
Katie Daniels, a 28-year-old Kentucky transplant with a strong set of traditional values, has just been dumped by her fiancé when she finds herself seated across a negotiating table from native New Yorker Cassidy Price, a sexy, selfassured woman wearing a man's suit. At first neither of them knows what to make of the other, but soon their undeniable connection will bring into question everything each of them thought they knew about sex and love.
Boy Erased
Author: Garrard Conley Through an institutionalised TwelveStep Program heavy on Bible study, Garrard Conley was supposed to emerge heterosexual, ex-gay, cleansed of impure urges and stronger in his faith in God for his brush with sin. Instead, even when faced with a harrowing and brutal journey, Garrard found the strength and understanding to break out in search of his true self and forgiveness.
A Little Life
Author: Hanya Yanagihara When four graduates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they are broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition. There is kind, handsome Willem, an aspiring actor; JB, a quick-witted, sometimes cruel Brooklyn-born painter seeking entry to the art world; Malcolm, a frustrated architect at a prominent firm; and withdrawn, brilliant, enigmatic Jude, who serves as their centre of gravity. Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride. But this book is not for the faint-hearted or sensitive readers as as parts of the book are extremely dark: It has a lot of self-harm, sexual abuse, and discussion of suicide.