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London Calling
This story begins in London in the summer of 1982. London and England were very different places then. Homosexuality had been off the lawbooks a scant fifteen years; no longer a crime punishable by two years' hard labor or compulsory hormone treatment, but not exactly widely accepted outside its own circles either. The Falklands War had just ended and the situation in Northern Ireland was steadily worsening under the iron-fisted leadership of that old hag Thatcher, while the infrastructure was falling apart and ugly labor disputes were looming on the horizon. Punk was, if not dead and buried, at least fatally wounded, and there was nothing much left for the youth of Britain safe dole queues and discontent.
It is against this backdrop that the slightly neurotic Rob, who has a first class degree in philosophy from one of the more prestigious colleges at the University of London but is doing time pumping beer in an East End pub, is seduced by his new flatmate Quinn after a night of drunken carousing and, after the initial panic wears off, starts to think that maybe, just maybe, his complete lack of success with girls, might be explained by his homosexuality.
Approx 231,000 words complete
It is against this backdrop that the slightly neurotic Rob, who has a first class degree in philosophy from one of the more prestigious colleges at the University of London but is doing time pumping beer in an East End pub, is seduced by his new flatmate Quinn after a night of drunken carousing and, after the initial panic wears off, starts to think that maybe, just maybe, his complete lack of success with girls, might be explained by his homosexuality.
Approx 231,000 words complete
695 pages, online fiction
First published January 1, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
September 27, 2010
I just loved this story so much. 70s London, punk culture, the cluelessness of Shane. What's not to like.
December 3, 2015
I have wanted to read this for over a year. Yes, the website said it was mostly gay porn. Still, I thought that the setting, early 80s London, post-punk, post Falklands era would be interesting. I expected some more conflict as well.
Well, there is nothing of that.
It is almost ENTIRELY gay porn- very well and beautifully written, no mispellings, save a couple misprints here and there. But the main story is very schematic. The characters are nice and experiment some personal growth in this work, but the conflict is not that strong. Just sex scenes one after another with little backstory gets a bit boring soon.
I expected more tension and even some addressing of social events of the era, but there isn´t much of that either except for some fleeting mentions of Thatcher and AIDS.
The end was a bit weak (urghhh why did you have to mention babies at all?) and I would give this work 2.5 stars, but I stretched to 3 stars just because of the huge effort that took the amateur author of this work to write a novel-length story with such skill (she/he writes better than some professionals so I hope he/she has continued writing successfully).
Well, there is nothing of that.
It is almost ENTIRELY gay porn- very well and beautifully written, no mispellings, save a couple misprints here and there. But the main story is very schematic. The characters are nice and experiment some personal growth in this work, but the conflict is not that strong. Just sex scenes one after another with little backstory gets a bit boring soon.
I expected more tension and even some addressing of social events of the era, but there isn´t much of that either except for some fleeting mentions of Thatcher and AIDS.
The end was a bit weak (urghhh why did you have to mention babies at all?) and I would give this work 2.5 stars, but I stretched to 3 stars just because of the huge effort that took the amateur author of this work to write a novel-length story with such skill (she/he writes better than some professionals so I hope he/she has continued writing successfully).
September 19, 2010
Pretty great read. The characters are well done, lovable and infuriating at the same time, dialog is good, nice secondary characters. There was a point where I wanted to choke Quinn and felt like his actions were incredibly hurtful (not to mention unbelievably hypocritical) but I still loved it.
February 10, 2012
Punk!, or, how Ms Thatcher influenced the love live of people with a tooth ache...
Want to Read
August 30, 2015anyone have a copy of this in ePub?
December 12, 2012
hmm what can i say about this book? it took a long time for me to finish it and thats saying something.
i liked the two mc's. Quinne is the new roommate that falls in love with Rob. But Rob is a straight bloke, or is he.....Ididnt know the music they were revering to and that was to bad.The writing wasnt bad but i cant understand that Quinn does the one thing he promised he would never do.
i liked the two mc's. Quinne is the new roommate that falls in love with Rob. But Rob is a straight bloke, or is he.....Ididnt know the music they were revering to and that was to bad.The writing wasnt bad but i cant understand that Quinn does the one thing he promised he would never do.
September 25, 2011
Loved it. It's freaking amazingly written, generally, switching POVs is one of my pet peeves, but GioGio does it so well that I couldn't imagine the story being complete without both Rob and Quinn's perspectives.
May 2, 2010
I really enjoyed London Calling!
The prose is very fluid; the whole story (with exception of the Interludes) are spoken from a first person main character's (Rob) point of view. This might irritate a few people, but I felt it fit better in with the flow of the story; made it seem a lot more real.
There were a few points where I had to set this book aside and read something else because the situations the main characters found themselves in were just too embarrassing for me (for instance, when Rob gets affronted at the innuendo Quinn makes about being gay to a waiter, and then very loudly states that he doesn't mind if all London knew he was gay... with a large table full of "macho" men sitting next to them). The predicaments Rob lands himself in are quite a bit much to handle!
That's actually something that did irritate me a bit: Rob is supposed to be 28 years old, and, although he just found his homosexuality, he acts a lot more like a teenager than a mature man. I feel this is something GioGio could have written better.
Also, Quinn is portrayed like the "super good guy" who can't do anything wrong, which is also something that irritated me; he is a very flat character because of this. Quinn could definitely use some faults and not seem so worldly wise and pure. And this doesn't happen until about over halfway in the book, which I find is a shame.
Past all that, it was a wonderful story I'd recommend to just about anyone who loves m-m romance!
The prose is very fluid; the whole story (with exception of the Interludes) are spoken from a first person main character's (Rob) point of view. This might irritate a few people, but I felt it fit better in with the flow of the story; made it seem a lot more real.
There were a few points where I had to set this book aside and read something else because the situations the main characters found themselves in were just too embarrassing for me (for instance, when Rob gets affronted at the innuendo Quinn makes about being gay to a waiter, and then very loudly states that he doesn't mind if all London knew he was gay... with a large table full of "macho" men sitting next to them). The predicaments Rob lands himself in are quite a bit much to handle!
That's actually something that did irritate me a bit: Rob is supposed to be 28 years old, and, although he just found his homosexuality, he acts a lot more like a teenager than a mature man. I feel this is something GioGio could have written better.
Also, Quinn is portrayed like the "super good guy" who can't do anything wrong, which is also something that irritated me; he is a very flat character because of this. Quinn could definitely use some faults and not seem so worldly wise and pure. And this doesn't happen until about over halfway in the book, which I find is a shame.
Past all that, it was a wonderful story I'd recommend to just about anyone who loves m-m romance!
December 7, 2012
On a whole I loved Quinn and Rob together. The sex was awesome and very descriptive, just the way I like it. I probably would have liked the story way more had there not been cheating and a threesome. I'm a monogamous kind of girl. I did like the roommate questioning his sexuality after the little bondage show, that was pretty funny. Pretty good story though.
January 25, 2012
This book didn't fulfill my expectations. I didn't enjoy it primarily because it was a period piece.I was forcing myself to finish it.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews