Someone Is Watching in Queereaders

Jul 08, 2017 Stephen rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: z-read-in-2017, z-read-in-2020

Ethan is a mid-western farm boy and a high-school athlete with a secret. He’s gay. Orphaned after his parents died in an auto crash, Ethan is living with his taciturn no-nonsense uncle. It’s 1980, and it’s rural Indiana, and yet, Ethan finds himself enthralled by the bodies of his fellow athletes, and in particular by his friend Jon.

While struggling to keep his secret, he also deals with his growing awareness of Nathan, a slightly younger boy that his uncle has hired to help around the farm. Nat Ethan is a mid-western farm boy and a high-school athlete with a secret. He’s gay. Orphaned after his parents died in an auto crash, Ethan is living with his taciturn no-nonsense uncle. It’s 1980, and it’s rural Indiana, and yet, Ethan finds himself enthralled by the bodies of his fellow athletes, and in particular by his friend Jon.

While struggling to keep his secret, he also deals with his growing awareness of Nathan, a slightly younger boy that his uncle has hired to help around the farm. Nathan comes from a very poor family with troubles of his own and looks up to the slightly older, much more self-assured Ethan immensely.

This is a tale of coming out and coming to terms. Others have criticized this book for repeating some themes over and over, but I found this very realistic. The prose clearly mimics the “hamster on a wheel” like thought process that goes through many young guys’ minds. Having grown up in a small Midwest town where most of the school athletes were also farmers, I found this depiction to be very accurate.

Having the same fears over and over was quite common. At the time these differences between myself and the other boys seemed overwhelmingly large and I only wish I’d had the courage to handle them as well as Ethan does. Perhaps I needed a better writer…

The author Mark Roeder, grew up in rural Indiana so this setting and this time rings very true with me. The characters in this are well-drawn, sympathetic, and believable. This was the first Roeder book that I read and I was hooked. Though his style isn’t as polished as many of the other writers I’ve read, I identify strongly with these characters and their struggles. Most of the characters are good at heart, and the central romance here kind of creeps up on you until you can’t believe that the main character doesn’t see it himself.

The characters here are mostly teenagers and there are some sexual scenes. But they are mostly fade-to-black and pretty modest by today’s standards.

These tales aren’t for everyone, but if honest tales of M/M romance, and coming out in a somewhat earlier time appeal to you, you could do worse than try this one. It may be a bit unpolished, but it’s a diamond in the rough.

Note: The cover shown above is from my beloved paperback copy of this book. This author has yet to find what I consider to be the “right” cover for this book. The current copy features a different stock image.

Always thought something like this would make a better cover for this