Roundheads and Sodomites

[Will]

As a New Year's gift for your reading pleasure, I'd like to recommend a new novel by Maria McCann. I came across it in a bookshop three days ago and have almost finished reading its 565 pages. True, I was stuck for most of yesterday in air traffic and bad weather; but it's also true that I've read into the small hours of the morning on two of the three nights since I bought it.

 

Titled AS MEAT LOVES SALT -- its origins in King Lear some of you will recognize -- the novel is a love story about two men who meet in the thick of a battle in the English Civil War of the 1640s. I know enough about the seventeenth century to assure history buffs of McCann's excellent research, and all of us know enough about male-male love to be intrigued by this tale. It's set, of course, in the world that existed before the concepts of "hetero-" and "homosexuality" were invented in the nineteenth century; and McCann is also aware of contemporary scholarship on sexual/social relations among and between men in Early Modern England.

 

So the book is not only a page-turner, it's a well-written, well-researched, and remarkably sensitive page-turner. And if you don't fall in love with Jacob Cullen, well, you need to have your gaydar tuned.

 

Maria McCann, AS MEAT LOVES SALT, San Diego, New York, and London: Harvest Books, Harcourt Inc., 2002. ISBN 0-15-601226-x

[topcat]

I agree: it's a great read. It came out a year ago but had little attention, until The Economist listed it as one of the year's best books.

[+ Charlie]

Thanks, Will, this is a new one to me. I didn't see a review in the NYTimes Book Review.

And welcome back--I've missed your posts.

[jack]

Will, Happy New Year. Should your scholarship include Greek history, would you coment on the sexuality of Alexander the Great. I thought he regularly enjoyed young Persian butts and boys during his conquests though some people recently report evidents he was bi. I know his mother, Olympias (pronounced: Oh, limpie ass) was well know all around Thessalonika while Phillip II, her husband and father of Alexamder, hung around the house more. Nonetheless, Alexander was a brilliant Greek, before, as you put it, hetero and homo were invented.

[jackhammer91406]

Ok, I admit to thousands of dollars in education, too long a life time of experience and to being relatively new to this board. But could someone tell me the meaning of "roundheads" in the thread title. it's probably so obvious that I am going to be humiliated when someone tells me, but it won't be the first time for me on this board and doubtless it won't be the last. The "sodomites" thing I can pretty much figure out, but am at a loss for the other.

 

ignorantly yours

[phage]

It has nothing to do with sex. It was a nickname used to describe one of the sides in the English civil war. I honestly don’t remember which side – the royal or parliament supporters. I did order the book though so I assume I will be refreshed.

 

Thanks for the recommendation Will. I love historical fiction and the love story will be a nice twist.

[jackhammer91406]

Phage,

Thanks for the edification.

[Guest Les]

Thanks Will!:7

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/015601226X.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

 

I found it on Amazon.com for $10.50 for the paperback plus free shipping. Hard to beat that!

[Rick Munroe]

>It has nothing to do with sex.

 

If you're a cocksucker, it does. }( I like round heads, mushroom heads (like mine), uncut or cut heads...but the head I like most is giving. :9

[jackhammer91406]

RE: a season of giving

 

That's the Rick I know and love and missed so much over the holidyas.

[topcat]

Roundheads = Parliamentarians (aka Puritans)

Cavaliers = Royalists

[Chuck50]

MMMMM Thanks What Guys HUGS Chuck

[btmstudnyc]

Will, I'm hoping that you read this book to me...and act out some of the scenes. It's a long book...SO, either we do the cliff notes version....Or you go for the BLOW by BLOW re-enactment.

 

Billy boy...just a side note...how much chocolate does it take to blow up my ass.

 

JIM

[phage]

Will,

 

I’ve only got a couple of hundred pages left and don’t see how this is going to turn out well. Have you set me up for a tragic ending? I was really hoping for a boy meets boy and lives happily ever after kind of thing.

 

BTW, I’m not quite as enamored of Jacob as you were but Christopher Ferris is a keeper.