No End to the Way

by Neville Jackson

The loving and tragic relationship between Ray, the narrator, and Cor, the young Dutchman he meets in a bar. At first the attraction between them is purely physical but as their knowledge of each other grows their relationship develops into a permanent and caring 'marriage' - despite the efforts of Cor's ex-lover to destroy it.

"In a real sense No End to the Way was the first Australian gay novel and it was available not just to the cognoscenti or to prowlers in the library stacks, but to fathers of three stopping off at a railway kiosk on the way home from work, to men in the suburbs curious about their own sexual inclinations — in other words, to ordinary Australian readers." - Robert Dessaix

Genres: LGBT

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1965

Reviews

[R.S. Edwards · Rating 2 out of 5]

I ordered this fifty year old paperback because I'm going to Australia this year and I was looking for examples of gay literature. Unfortunately, it is very dated and I think was probably inaccurate in its portrayal of gay relationships even then. It seems to come from a way of thinking that gay men couldn't meet and fall in love like straight people and their love stories have to be tragedies. That was fairly typical of movies and books of the time and seems to come from authors who probably believed there was something wrong with them. I'm glad I didn't read this when I was a lonely teenager. Fortunately, I met a lot of gay people of that generation, (born in the 1920's and 30's, all gone now) who enjoyed long, happy relationships.
The author, Gerald Marcus Glaskin, writing under a pseudonym, used a 'sustained second-person narrative voice' throughout the book. That was a little distracting.

[Sean Kennedy · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's hard to read a 'vintage' book out of its historical context, and I can normally switch off when an attitude or statement that's pretty unacceptable today is displayed - but I struggled to do so with a book that is so steeped in misogyny and anti-femme (which are linked and intertwined). There is the 'evil wife' trope, and every man who doesn't present as 'normal' but 'swishy' is mocked and derided. You could say this was a representation of a certain character, but it isn't just him. There is one conversation between the narrator and his partner where they both agree that it's so wonderful neither of them are swishy and it's just so bad and you might as well be a woman.

This book is interesting as a relic of its time, but you may find its attitudes hard to reconcile. I know I did.