Finally back in print! This ground-breaking, controversial novel, banned in Australia and other countries for it's "homosexual references," was the dream acting/directing project of actor Sal Mineo, who was tragically murdered only hours after learning the movie would finally be made.
Vincent McCaffery is a bright, good-looking, and gifted teenager hustler who seduces both men and women for money. He moves from a NY tenement into a plush Greenwich Village brothel, hoping to make it rich, but he falls in love with a prostitute and then plunges into a world of decadence and violence when an older man becomes obsessed with him. "It's about a boy hustler and a girl hustler who fall in love. It deals with the essential purity of love. The story's essentials remind me of
Crime & Punishment
and the boy especially reminds me of Roskolnikov." Sal Mineo "
McCaffery
takes us to the very limits of depravity and then beyond. The prostitution of the soul as well as the body is presented in this novel in a vigorous fashion."
Nashville Banner
"Gorham relates it all with economy, believable sobriety, and dramatic depth of feeling. He has succeeded in making this story of a seemingly lost life into a Greek drama of universal elements."
Courier-Journal
(Louisville, KY) "Gordham has written a perfectly horrible story of perversion in the big city."
Manchester Evening News
(UK) "A full-fledged portrait of a working-class Irish boy who becomes a hustler and call boy. Gorham's novels, literary works with pot-boiler topics (prostitution, alcoholism, street crime), were known for their bluntness and realism.
McCaffery's
power lies not so much in its expose of male prostitution, but in its protagonist's troubled, sexualized relationship with his brutal father." Michael Bronski,
Pulp Friction
"Fast-paced, magnetizing...shrewd and literate."
Los Angeles Times
"While the gay characters of this novel are not central or well developed, the larger questions around blackmail, what would later be known as gay-bashing, and exploitation of teenage boys for prostitution are central. This is a dark story of money, power and poverty."
Homofabula
"This is a raw book, one of the most controversial novels of recent years. For readers old enough to know where babies come from,
Lady Chatterley's Lover
is really a dull book. Nobody can say that about
." Frederick Wertham, author of
Seduction of the Innocent.