Comment

Community comment are the opinions of contributing users. These comment do not represent the opinions of Fraser Valley Regional Library.
Mar 11, 2017
What slowly struck me as I was reading this book was how short the "reparative" therapy the author undertook was. It was about two weeks, with some "counselling" sessions beforehand. The book definitely captures the distress for everyone in a fundamentalist family when a son turns out to be gay. And reference is made to how devastating reparative therapy is to its victims, including suicide and probably post-traumatic shock. The interesting thing here is how great the effect was from such a short course of therapy. This therapy can and has gone on for years for some people, and it can be a tremendous blow to one's identity and coping. (One piece that has always made me mad about this therapy is the effect on the women who are married by gay men as they follow through on the therapy. These women's lives are not easy, and their marriages often fail later down the line.) I agree with another reviewer that it would have been interesting and useful to have heard more about what happened after the therapy. How did the author end up in Bulgaria? Did he manage to fall in love, introduce a partner to his family, become part of a gay community? How has his family come to terms with him being gay? How has his father's career been affected? I would have like to have heard more.