What’s most striking about this collection is its general optimism. No longer is the boy-lover depicted as a haunted, guilt-ridden creature, a mental basket case destined for doom or the psychoanalyst’s couch. Where he has difficulties with a hostile society he reacts with anger and indignation, like Steve in Camping Out and the narrator in Joey’s Island. But mostly these are stories of men and boys having their affairs without too much trauma, at least on account of their sex, from the outside world.
Quote:As the majority world, rotating majestically on its heterosexual axis, discovers the delights of persecuting its paedophile minority, writing boy-lovers are rapidly finding their voice. It is a very independent voice, with little knee-jerk support for conventional thinking. We hear it not only in the paedophile journals themselves but also, increasingly, in the gay press (outside of Great Britain). But it is in fiction that they have voiced their concerns and preoccupations most forcefully. Let us look at what has been on the minds (and absent from the minds) of Panthology authors.
