Discovering Love

[JP Caballero]

Castle Roland present A new story by Rick Beck  Discovering Love

[Talo Segura]

Two chapters in to what is an introspective voyage through the mind if a fifteen year old boy and his attraction for another boy. Captivating and funny, funny as in humorous, with some great lines and witty dialogue. The author captures a moment in a teenager's life when he is arriving or confirming certain assumptions about himself, and he does this rather brilliantly.

[Talo Segura]

Chapter Five: it's a good thing Martin is not too naive. Meeting the guys in the basement around the pool table could end any way. There were no lights on in the living room, but it's darker in the basement and possibly even darker in the testosterone filled fogged minds of the teenage boys.

You know how you talk to yourself, you're doing it now as you read this, and that is exactly what this story narrates, the inside of Martin's head! Well almost, at least what he wants to share.

There is an odd sentence, "I sat on the corner of my bed and thought about going crazy, not so much doing it as was I." I don't get it, but maybe it's a typo. Otherwise, the story is engrossing.

 

[Talo Segura]

Chapter Nine and the sleepover post pool games aftermath in the dark house has turned into an orgy of teenage boy sex whilst episodes of the Outer Limits flicker across the television screen in the lounge.

There is a serious element of examining how Martin feels, reacts, and developes, but also an in escapable over abundance of eroticism. Justified or not in telling the story? You will need to decide for yourself, but it is integral, in fact it is the story.

[Talo Segura]

Chapter Fifteen and it turns out to be an "unputdownable" novel. Rick Beck seems to me to be portraying teenage love (sex) exactly as you feel it at that age. Maybe not everyone meets guys like Martin meets, or maybe you just forego the opportunity. It's always a choice. You know what you think. You know what you feel. Then it's a little bit down to circumstances and how far you're willing to go. Still, you can't help falling in love, all the time, with lots of people, and thinking about sex, all the time, with lots of people. Teenage romance is not Disney, it's like this, more real.

[Talo Segura]

REVIEW

Discovering Love by Rick Beck.

This story was first published in 1997 and like many similar stories from that same era, there is a certain formula or perhaps you might say the recipies have many of the same ingredients. That said, this story is different enough to remark upon, because whilst looking at teenage relationships, the kind of friendships in this story are perhaps more real and honest than in those many other teen romances.

The fictional element of the story can obviously exaggerate the reality, but nevertheless, there seems to be a lot of real life drama and experience in there. As they say, it could have happened that way. A number of life questions are examined about what is a relationship, what is loyalty, how do you live with a group of "friends?" Who are your friends, who might simply be using you, and what is your own role in all this? These are some of the questions that Martin, our protagonist, asks himself, and asks others: "...he was trying to get a better understanding of why men loved men, even if they thought they only loved women."

The road to happiness and fulfilment twists and turns, never straightforward, it holds surprises, revelations, and angst, at each turn and intersection. Over time everyone grows up a little, inevitably, although does everyone change and truly become an adult, or are we stuck forever in the patterns created by our past? You may never have met the kinds of people and situations Martin encounters, or you may have been one of those boys who walked away. Whatever the case, it cannot be denied, even if you never experienced it yourself, that most everything in this story is founded in real life.

As an early work by the author and given the recipe of the epoch you will need to forgive, forget, and get over the lack of editing, along with the amount of graphic sex. For my taste the author was a little heavy handed with the sex, but then again the story is entirely focused on teenage relationships and very much on those sexual experiences. So, you couldn't really have the story without the sex.

This is certainly a story that stands apart from the crowd, and as such is well worth picking up. I enjoyed reading it, it was almost non-putdownable, as I was drawn into the complex relationships of all the characters. The many secondary roles are drawn with skill and enough background description to bring vividly alive the whole story. I would recommend it.