Book Review: Timothy by Greg Herren
I’ve read a few of Greg Herren’s short stories and enjoyed them, so when the opportunity to review Timothy I jumped at the chance. But ultimately I was to be very disappointed.
In Timothy the meek, uninteresting and Unnamed main character – whom I might add has had a tragic life so far – meets Carlo Romaniello. Carlo is a mega rich widower who instantly falls in love with the main character. After a week of bliss they get married.
Carlo has a huge mansion called Spindrift and takes his new husband to this home. The Unnamed main character is to take over the running of the household and its staff. Carlo is often away on business trips.
But Spindrift is filled with Timothy. Timothy was Carlo’s husband prior to his death. Timothy was a gorgeous-looking model, a talented photographer and had his own successful underwear range. Basically everything the unnamed main character isn’t.
As the main character adapts to his new life in Spindrift, he learns bits about Carlo & Timothy’s relationship. He fills in the blanks often wrongly. But the truth does eventually come out about Timothy and his death.
There were two fundamental problems with this novel for me. Firstly that every aspect of the novel felt like a cliché. The helpless and poor younger gay man meets a wealthy older good looking gay man. They get married after a week – I mean come on, who does that? and they move to a castle…whoops a mansion…and live happily ever after. Timothy read like a cliché fairytale with a gay slant.
Second was the main character. The unnamed main character lacked any realism and was essentially boring. He responded more emotionally to his perceived relationship problems than to the death of his father, whom was his only living relative.
The plot was predictable and not enough actually happened. Important plot points – like the first week where the two characters fell in love and their marriage were mentioned but not actually shown/told in the story. This inevitably effected the pacing negatively. Often the story gave little intrigue or hooks to encourage the reader to read on.
The description was reasonable. But because of the recurrent clichés it was hard to suspend reality and become absorbed within the story. Timothy is available to buy on Amazon if you’d like to. But I can’t honestly recommend it.
Review soon,
Antony
