JL Merrow's It's All Geek to Me

[Ulysses]

A charming, heartwarming bit of fluff from JL Merrow, “It’s All Geek to Me” is full of her typical humor and British specificity. Jez is a lab technician from north London, and when he goes to a downtown comic book store to buy the latest issue of something for his hospitalized best friend, he meets Rhys.

That’s really all it is. It could be an episode of a sitcom on TV. But Merrow turns Jez’s straight chum into a sort of a Greek chorus, dispensing wisdom from his hospital bed as he flirts with the nurse. And Jez is presented as a loving, big-hearted man whose anxiety over his friend’s near-death experience hides his own low self-esteem. Rhys, well he’s tall, dark and handsome – and cool. But under all that cool he’s a gentle, considerate caring man. Merrow’s little story is a thoughtful character study and a glance into small-town gay life within the sprawling Metropolis of London. No one does it more deftly than she.