I Am Not Raymond Wallace

by Sam Kenyon

Manhattan, 1963: weeks before the assassination of President Kennedy, fresh-faced Raymond Wallace lands in the New York Times newsroom on a three-month bursary from Cambridge University. He soon discovers his elusive boss, Bukowski, is being covertly blackmailed by an estranged wife, and that he himself is to assist the straight-laced Doty on an article about the 'explosion of overt homosexuality' in the city. On an undercover assignment, a secret world is revealed to a world in which he need no longer pretend to be something or someone he cannot be; a world in which he meets Joey.
Like so many men of his time and of his kind, Raymond faces a choice between conformity, courage and compartmentalisation. The decision he makes will ricochet destructively through lives and decades until-in another time, another city; in Paris, 2003-Raymond's son Joe finally meets Joey. And the healing begins.
I Am not Raymond Wallace is a heartrending and mending story spanning generations and continents, told with precision-tooled prose, sharply-imagined settings and compassionately-observed characterisation.
'Taking as his starting-point a real-life moment of queer history from 1960s New York, Sam Kenyon spins a marvellously stylish and often unexpected story.' NEIL BARTLETT
'A joyous literary triumph that moved me to tears.' JACK FRITSCHER
'A triumph. A primer for all ages.' MURRAY MELVIN

269 pages, Paperback

Published September 15, 2022

Reviews

[Sophy H · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very well written fiction by Sam Kenyon.

Funnily enough I began disliking this half way through when the story wasn't going as I wanted it to, then I had severe words with myself! Life is complicated, people are complicated and unpredictable and unsure and make wrong decisions and we can't dislike a story because it portrays that human truth! Once I'd managed to change my mindset, I loved the story.

The characters are fleshy and convincing, the backdrop of New York City in the 60's is atmospheric. I liked the story arc and the almost cyclical nature of the tale.

Great fiction.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this in one sitting. Just beautiful.

[Rebecca Albrow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Got up early this morning to finish this book with a coffee in the sunshine. What a read! This book tells the intimate story of Raymond, a trainee journalist and author. Spanning multiple decades, starting in the 60s, the story journeys through Raymond's tormented life, a life containing beautiful, yet closeted relationships. His brief encounter with Joey is never fully realised due to the social and illegal exclusions of the gay community at that time, which leads Raymond to struggle to form any future relationships.

This is an insightful and beautifully written novel, albeit at times written too sophisticatedly. There are brief moments in the final chapter with Joe that I thought were unnecessary and didn't add value, but overall this is a great, insightful and sensitive novel. Thank you to Sam Kenyon, Inkandescent and Books, Brews & Barstools book group for choosing it for this month's Pride read.

[Ian B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A story in three parts of thwarted young love and its after effects, both disastrous and redemptive, set in 1963, 1983 and 2003, and taking place on two continents. I can’t remember the last time I changed my mind so much about a book as I read it. Initially, I thought the first part, in which the title character falls in love with another man whilst on a journalism internship in New York a little bland and disappointing. Aside from Raymond and his horrible mother, the characters came across as thinly imagined, relating to one another in ways that felt idealized; I can only describe their interactions as frictionless, implausibly so given the era and its attitudes. Then I got to the end of this section and saw ‘R. W., 1978,’ and understood that it had been a memoir written in the third person by Wallace himself. The faults I found might instead be viewed as by-products of the unhappy self-absorption of the person remembering. (An illustration of this theory: other people frequently tell Raymond how funny he is and burst into laughter at his feeble jokes. I assumed that Sam Kenyon couldn’t do humour in dialogue; but what if Raymond is actually demonstrating that beneath his self-hatred lies a protective conviction of his own wit despite evidence to the contrary?)

Once I’d got the idea of the subjective memoirist into my head, and that the people he wrote about were likely to be resistant to his interpretations, the rest of the novel, which I now experienced as ambitious and moving and multi-faceted, opened up for me. Part two consists of letters written but not sent in 1983; Raymond’s reminded me of Lady Sibyl’s confession in Marie Corelli’s The Sorrows of Satan, and demonstrated that someone who has suffered greatly may be pitiable without being at all likeable (I agreed with his self-description as ‘a solipsistic old gas-bag,’ I’m afraid). In part three, Raymond’s American lover, Joey, having read the published memoir of their time together, Manhattan, 1963 & Other Regrets, meets Raymond’s son Joe and is given the letter written to him twenty years before:

… as though, in reading his letter written to me I am – once again – being written by him. Then I realise that it is that which I resent. I am not written by him, and never was; I am not determined by him, and am not circumscribed by his foibles, failures and flaws.

[RedReads · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this in a single day - kept trying to get on with other things but was unable to resist the draw of picking the book back up. Beautiful writing. The style of every section worked for me - from the almost scene direction style of the opening chapters to the letters to the changing POVs of the 3rd section. The plot held my attention and far and above the characters held my heart.
I only skimmed the cover blurb before reading this as I was reading it for a book club and I'm glad I went in with little expectations as I could not have guessed what was coming.

Already recommended this to people IRL and I'll continue to do so. Would read more by Sam Kenyon.

MM, historical (1963), deals with period anti-gay attitudes and conformity, explicit intimacy.

(1 potential editing error spotted on p.316 of the paperback, a repeated sentence.)

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great read, spanning 40 years, there's a lot to fit in with a time jump from 196 to 2003 with a epistolary short section equidistant between the two. It was a good study of the challenges facing gay people in that time period. Some parts felt like they needed further exploration, like the article Raymond is helping to write. All in all though, a good book and well worth reading.

[Larry · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I found this very readable and appreciated the structure with the different sections of the book following different formats and timelines, too many aspects of the story didn't quite work for me. Heavily cliched and Gary Stu-like characters, often behaving in ways that appear anachronistic or just difficult to believe. I'm afraid it has not really left a lasting impression. 5/10

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful prose. I think I would have preferred it to either end at the first section or to have more of the later sections, as these felt a bit of an after thought.