Enchanted youth /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:McMullen, Richie.
Imprint:London : Gay Men's Press, 1990.
Description:157 p. ; 20 cm
Language:English
Subject:
Format: Print Book
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/9279159
Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:0854491341 (pbk)
9780854491346 (pbk)
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In this sensitive, revealing memoir, McMullen recounts his year as a London ``rent boy,'' a prostitute engaging in homosexual acts. In 1958, when he's 15, prostitution offers McMullen an escape from his abusive father (described in his earlier Enchanted Boy ) and the ``cold hearted''p. 8 city of Liverpool. He ends up in ``The Meat Rack'' at Piccadilly Circus, where boys hang around ``like marketable produce in a butcher's shop,'' waiting for customers. Fortunately, the more experienced Joker takes the innocent McMullen under his wing. In the course of the year he discovers a supportive camaraderie among the rent boys and falls in love with a public school boy whose father takes elaborate steps to separate them. But this period also has its horrors: McMullen contracts syphilis, is raped and tortured by a customer and learns of the murder of an acquaintance, another rent boy. Yet McMullen, who is now a counselor and youth worker, emphasizes the good in people rather than the sordid or demeaning, though he realizes that his memoriesstet/pk may have become generous over the years. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review