"The Gay Decameron" by Christopher Whyte

A group of gay men, mostly in pairs, gather for a dinner party in the posh Edinburgh flat of one of the couples. They reminisce about the past and tell stories. Some of them have been lovers, or have made love to someone whom someone else at the party has loved. Some of their friends are now dead, for example one committed suicide and another died from AIDS. Each of them remembers their own journey from the first realisation that they were gay to now. 

It's quite convoluted and I needed notes to keep track of who was who and who had slept with whom. Although the characters had different experiences and did different things, I didn't feel that they were sufficiently differentiated. In a way, and perhaps this was the theme of the book, they all merged into one archetypal gay experience. Not that they were all the same! Some experienced long periods of chastity, others were very promiscuous. But the basic pattern was that relationships begin tentatively, with risk, and frequently end in toxic unhappiness, but the goal is almost always a stable, loving and enduring partnership.

The one part of the book I would have junked is the fantasy story of the young lovers set somewhere in the Middle East in the middle ages. I suppose the idea was that this was a world in which gay love was accepted as everyday. But it read like soft porn and clashed with the realistic stories of modern gay life in Edinburgh (and Barcelona). 

Selected quotes:

• “A crossroads town with ramshackle buildings lining either side of the street, like drunken soldiers unexpectedly summoned to parade.” (Ch 2)
• “Sad and alone ... rattling around in this huge flat like the last biscuit left in the tin.” (Ch 11)
• “The further up the tree a monkey is, the more of its backside you get to see.” (Ch 15)
• “The further upwards in price range one goes, the more anonymous hotel rooms become.” (Ch 16)
• “Candles were hard and solid. Yet they transformed themselves into light the moment you gave them the chance.” (Ch 23)

October 2025; 346 pages

First published by Victor Gollancz in 1998

My paperback edition was issued by Indigo in 1999.

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God