Holding the Man
by Timothy Conigrave
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Book Summary Information
Author: Timothy ConigraveAfterword: Tommy Murphy
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-08-31
ISBN: 0978825950
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Cuttyhunk Books
Book Reviews of Holding the Man
Book Review: An honest and haunting memoir of discovery, love, and tragedy.
Summary: 5 Stars
All lives are lived through a particular set of circumstances and are bound by time, place, and fate. However familiar or strange that context may seem, a successful memoir allows us to learn--ever so intimately--what it was like to experience the trajectory of a particular life, almost as though we had lived it ourselves. This is the beauty and strength of Tim Conigrave's "Holding the Man."
As a nine-year-old schoolboy in the late 1960's near Melbourne, Australia, Conigrave is growing up with "a head full of boys" as his gay identity starts to emerge from the flux of his friends and schoolmates. When he enters high school, he is mesmerized by a boy named John Caleo, a beautiful boy with long eyelashes who is captain of the football team. After a furtive period of trying to get John's attention, Conigrave invites him to his house for dinner. By evidence of the lack of resistance as he courts John, Conigrave eventually calls John up and asks, "John Caleo, will you go round with me?" which is an invitation to "go steady." Caleo responds with a single word, "Yep." Thus, a relationship is born where Conigrave and Caleo will be lovers for the rest of their lives.
The remainder of the memoir follows the couple through the emergence of the other aspects of their lives: college and gay activism, friends, career, and the tragedy of landing, in young adulthood, in the emerging AIDS epidemic.
Conigrave is nothing if not frank which provides strength to his story, even if--at times--he may veer toward too much explicitness with sex and the particular manifestations of illness, at least for some readers. Nothing is left to the imagination.
But what does shine through in this account is the courage and devotion Tim and John showed as they insisted on their relationship over the objection of disapproving family members. Even more moving is the tenderness, intimacy, and love between these two men which could only have arisen from the specter of profound loss. This is a powerful story that you will not soon forget.
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