The romance is pretty much doomed from the beginning, given that in 1963 homosexuality is still the love that dare not say its name. Joey is the opposite, accepted by a father who doesn’t understand his son’s inclinations but adores him regardless, welcoming Raymond into his family. The Raymond's controlling mother arrives to spend a couple of days with him at the end of his internship and accompany him home.

The decision he makes will ricochet destructively through lives and decades until—in another time, another city; in Paris, 2003—Raymond’s son Joe finally meets Joey. Opening in 1963, it follows a Cambridge undergraduate, fresh out of college, who’s won a three-month bursary at The New York Times and meets the love of his life. There are some lovely major and minor characters - I particularly liked Dolores of the major characters and of the minor characters, Joshua (thrilled to be immortalised) and Sonia (70 but still sure of her sex appeal). Delightfully chosen adjectives skilfully woven into a tale of hard choices in a difficult time, loss and being found. A "historical" novel that starts in 1963 with some looks back and an epilogue that is set in modern times.

There are and were scenes of gay sex portrayed quite vividly, but this should be a story that anyone and not only gay men or boys, should read if you know what true and real love and love for LIFE is all about. It's unclear to me what purpose this novel serves, other than to reinforce an outdated narrative that featured privileged protagonists who had the luxury of a closet. Manhattan, 1963: weeks before the assassination of President Kennedy, fresh-faced Raymond Wallace lands in the New York Times newsroom on a three-month bursary from Cambridge University. I Am not Raymond Wallace is a multi-stranded story of queer redemption spanning multiple generations, told with precision-tooled prose, sharply-imagined settings and compassionately-observed characterisation. This in no way makes me more likely to give the book a glowing review because when we used to sit together in school orchestra, he was quite annoying.

Witty, touching and hopeful, it’s an absorbing novel which ends with a sentence that brought tears to my eyes. PLEASE NOTE: From 1st of July 2021, shipments from the UK to EU countries will be subject to Value Added Tax (VAT) charges.On an undercover assignment, a secret world is revealed to Raymond: a world in which he need no longer pretend to be something or someone he cannot be; a world in which he meets Joey. The story is highly evocative of Manhattan in 1963 at the start and written in a traditional novel style. What continues for the rest of the 300 plus pages of this debut novel has got to be the most beautifully written account of a 21 year old mans 'Sexual Awakenings' as I have ever read.