Genre: Romance, Mystery, Adventure
LGBTQ+ Category: Gay
Reviewer: Ulysses
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About The Book
A mystery. A romance. An ocular adventure.
Tom’s a data analyst. It’s not a passionate affair. Neither is his relationship with Mario, although Mario thinks it is. That’s Tom’s way. He makes things work, whether they work for him or not. With anyone else it would be called low expectations. Not Tom. His passion lies elsewhere. He’s a secret writer.
The commitment is unusual and he keeps it to himself. Life has already dealt a few blows and he’s reluctant to test its limits. Undemanding relationships. Unpublished books. A job that requires little thought. A bad attitude. These are the markers that keep him in place.
But when an accident leads him to discover he’s losing his sight, life screeches to a halt. His writing, his career, his very independence are at stake. Time, once the future, is turning into the past.
Then a man appears. Beautiful yet damaged, Hanif brings light to Tom’s darkness. The irony isn’t lost on him, if it’s irony at all. Just when he’s about to give up on life, he finds a new reason to live. But things may not be as they seem. Lies can be told. Accidents can be arranged. Identities can be assumed.
Tom’s story is a trip down a nebulous road. From an easy life to an erotic adventure, from a modest employee to a man on the run, he must see the truth while he still can. Ophthalmologists. Optometrists. Lovers. Friends. Some wish him well. Some don’t.
Played out against a backdrop of political intrigue and haunted by ghosts from the past, is this story of love at first sight no more than a game of blind man’s bluff?
The Review
Patrick Doyle believes in romance; but not in normal romance.
What immediately hooked me into this story was the fact that the main character, Tom Pryszlak, is grappling with the fact that he has glaucoma, and that his eyesight might be seriously affected by it. Since this is something I’ve been dealing with myself for a long time now, it triggered a number of emotional responses that I didn’t anticipate.
However, once Tom catches the eye of a handsome Iranian named Hanif (or, more accurately, he notices Hanif giving him the eye), the narrative begins to twist. The tale that unfolds doesn’t have much to do with glaucoma, but (on the other hand) everything to do with seeing—or, as it were, NOT seeing.
It is a love story, complete with a jealous ex and difficult family situations. Other than that, however, it is unorthodox and unnerving and compelling. Tom, like other characters in Doyle’s novels, is not immediately likeable. A tightly-wound techie who reads spreadsheets on computers, his social skills are not enormous and his charm seems—to me, at least—limited. Hanif, by contrast, is warm and charming as well as handsome. The fact that he wears an eye patch (did I mention that?) adds to his raffish quality and appeals to Tom. His one good eye is beautiful, and seems to reflect a beautiful soul in its depths (that’s a rather romantic notion).
They do become a couple; but the road to their pairing is not smooth, nor straight, nor safe. It goes without saying that there are trust issues. As Tom digs down and finds his better angel as he gets to know Hanif, I grew to like him more, and to feel true sympathy for him. Shifting the reader’s perception of a character is a delicate and skilled operation. Doyle pulls it off, and it makes the book thrum with emotional power.
And that’s all I can tell you.
5 stars.
The Reviewer
Ulysses Grant Dietz grew up in Syracuse, New York, where his Leave It to Beaver life was enlivened by his fascination with vampires, from Bela Lugosi to Barnabas Collins. He studied French at Yale, and was trained to be a museum curator at the University of Delaware. A curator since 1980, Ulysses has never stopped writing fiction for the sheer pleasure of it. He created the character of Desmond Beckwith in 1988 as his personal response to Anne Rice’s landmark novels. Alyson Books released his first novel, Desmond, in 1998. Vampire in Suburbia, the sequel to Desmond, is his second novel.
Ulysses lives in suburban New Jersey with his husband of over 41 years and their two almost-grown children.
By the way, the name Ulysses was not his parents’ idea of a joke: he is a great-great grandson of Ulysses S. Grant, and his mother was the President’s last living great-grandchild. Every year on April 27 he gives a speech at Grant’s Tomb in New York City.
