Don't know what to read this summer? Try these!

A lovingly dreamy prose and a very loveable protagonist will lead you in a travel through his idolized Renaissance Italy, and his quest for love and happiness in these troubled times. A very cool and original masterpiece!

 I recommend this book (and the whole Buddies quadrilogy) to any reader who searches really good books. The writing style is superb, an exquisite mix of wit, irony, wisdom and poignant melancholy; the stories sparkle whit Mordden's superb narrative style. The comic, the insightful and the dramatic mix in an unique, original way. One of my favourite examples of this is "The Boffer", when Dennis Savage is debating whit Bud wether to attend a college reunion with his straight classmates, and the emotional and social factors entailed, while Little Kiwi displays, as a comical counterpoint, his very meagre skills as a trick magician. The characters are very finely detailed and lovely, the dialogue is worthy of the better Noel Coward. Read this and the entire series: Ethan Mordden is a very great writer,his stories New York's companion to St. Francisco's Tales of the City of Armistead Maupin.

 The "Buddies" series of Ethan Mordden is composed by five delicious books narrating with humour, zany wit and profound sensibility the life of some gay friend in Manhattan:Bud, the narrator , his closest friend Dennis Savage, Dennis' lover Little Kiwi (aka Virgil Brown aka J.), the "elf-child" trickster Cosgrove and the gentle hunk Carlo, and their friends, parents and acquaintances."Some men are Lookers" shows the growing independence of Little Kiwi,little no more, whilst Cosgrove is in full bloom and gives his best (or his worst) in "What a difference Miss Faye Made", when he invites a shameless drag-queen at a dinner for Peter Keene, prospective Dennis Savage's editor. Another great story is "Exorcis", a funny/tragic story, Little Kiwi/Virgil and Cosgrove offer to their friends the vision of a movie "The lost boys", wayward boys turning into vampires. Among the one-liners, arrives the last call of an old Dennis Savage's acquaintance,but Dennis wouldn't listen. He will learn a sour lesson by his ever more independent Virgil,who will become (to their friends dismay) gradually ever more "mature" and estranged.
I have grown fond of these characters, of their disputes, growing pains and various adventures, punctuated by a sparkling dialogue and, at times, poignant sentimental moments. Something of a family, as Bud calls it. It's an exquisite read for gays and non-homophobic straights alike, because this little microcosm's tales tell us something about tolerance, the meaning of love, the endurance against discrimination and hatred, that has universal value. I counsel you all to read them! They're really funny and inspiring.But the spooky, the tragic and the hysterically funny intertwine magnificently in these stories, worthy of Saki, O'Henry and Oscar Wilde.

 Oh,give me a Spell where I could find true Love search painted breezily like the flight of a dove Poor Alex who loves and cannot find other than hysterical Justins,rent-boys and similar kind A gay quadrangle of love and lust and despair in the country And a melancholyc athmosphere of fin-de-siecle sun-tryists I only object to the accent of drugs, otherwise,the book goes down smooth like a milk jug