I Am Not Raymond Wallace

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When Raymond takes this 'job' and is told that he needs more 'appropriate for the times' clothing to fit in to the group that he is going to be doing undercover writing for; he has no idea that he is going to fall in love whole heartedly for the first time in his life with the young man at the clothier.

Jetlagged and excited, Raymond makes his way to the newspaper’s office wearing one of his late father’s suits. The sex scenes are quite frank, so I couldn't give it to my 88 year old mother, but if you're OK with those, I would recommend it and I look forward to any future novels. Kenyon does a nice job recreating the pre-Stonewall milieu and there are some nice touches to the story.

I feel that if you enjoyed books like Lie with Me or Swimming in the Dark (two of my absolute favourite books) you'll also love this book. It is against this recontextualization that Sam Kenyon has written his debut novel, I am not Raymond Wallace, a story about closeted cis men set largely in 1963.

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. I Am not Raymond Wallace is a multi-stranded story of queer redemption spanning multiple generations, told with precision-tooled prose, sharply-imagined settings and compassionately-observed characterisation. 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. The Raymond's controlling mother arrives to spend a couple of days with him at the end of his internship and accompany him home.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. 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. In part two which is set in 2003 and starts two thirds of the way through the book - some of the characters use 'letters' to communicate with other people to continue the narrative. Like so many men of his time and of his kind, Raymond faces a choice between conformity, courage and compartmentalisation. Surprisingly graphic in a few places, the story is lovely and warm, and you can fall in love with the protagonist of the title easily.