Chris reviewed Dance on my grave by Cao Xueqin
None
3 stars
Was this at the time of Clause 28 when 'advocating' homosexuality was illegal in the UK? There was a long time when despite being legal to be gay it was still very much not tolerated - anyone over the age of about 50 in the UK will have grown up in an atmosphere of 'it may be legal but we don't like them'. In light of that DOMG was ground-breaking. However there is the Bury Your Gays thing - i.e. gay lad dies (in which we find out that Jewish funerals are minimal and done very quickly - makes sense with a desert religion) and boy turns out to be straight after all because Magical Scandi Girl. It's like you have a But Not Too Gay trope, and that Hal has the sexuality of whoever he gets close to without being able to find out who he actually is.
Accidentally …
Was this at the time of Clause 28 when 'advocating' homosexuality was illegal in the UK? There was a long time when despite being legal to be gay it was still very much not tolerated - anyone over the age of about 50 in the UK will have grown up in an atmosphere of 'it may be legal but we don't like them'. In light of that DOMG was ground-breaking. However there is the Bury Your Gays thing - i.e. gay lad dies (in which we find out that Jewish funerals are minimal and done very quickly - makes sense with a desert religion) and boy turns out to be straight after all because Magical Scandi Girl. It's like you have a But Not Too Gay trope, and that Hal has the sexuality of whoever he gets close to without being able to find out who he actually is.
Accidentally messed up the title and came up with ...
“I’ll dance on your grave”
This follows the story of a youth, Tad, growing up in a small town (Alston, Cumbria, 300 metres above sea level) who aged 14 is assumed to be gay and attacked by a bunch of local pikers who drag him into a deserted chapel in the woods, rape him, and keep him underground for weeks. Upon his release he is assumed to have gone missing deliberately (this is set in the 1980s when sexual issues were much less discussed) and plots his bloody revenge upon his attackers. Bloodshed and arson follows. The story is set around the closure of the foundry, the town’s principal employer, although as Tad points out his attackers’ consequent unemployment is a poor excuse for their behaviour.