Reviewed
by Adrian Debolt by William Maltese
Paperback: 224 pages ; $14.95
Green Candy Press; (November 9, 2004)
ISBN: 1931160309
ADRIAN DEBOLT, the official Book Reviewer for the Tgforum.com on-line ezine, has written several books, as well as contributed short stories and articles to numerous magazines. Pretty much retired, deBolt now devotes all available free time to traveling, occasionally imbibing really good French wine, writing, and reading. As regards the last, deBolt only occasionally has the time to enjoy a book outside the transgender-format, required by her Tgforum.com reviewer gig, but in William Maltese’s SLOVAKIAN BOY, the reviewer admits to having enjoyably lucked out with a real winner.
If I had to find one word to describe William Maltese’s new crossover novel, SLOVAKIAN BOY, that word would be charming. There’s just something about the totality of this wonderful coming-of-age-in-Slovakia erotic romp of an attractive rustic youth — with family members, friends, acquaintances, and complete strangers — which leaves the reader with a pleasing sense of smile-on-face satisfaction. At the same time, it answers that universal question so often asked by aficionados of those sub-genre DVD boy-boy porno flicks that have gained such wide popularity by depicting hard-working Eastern European youth from countries previously behind the iron curtain: “How do such innocent and nice kids, like you, get from your bucolic lifestyles to porno superstardom?”
Everything about this book, from its attractive tongue-in-cheek jacket that can easily be mistaken for the cover of an xxx-rated video, to its fast-paced, frothy, and seductively laugh-out-loud Tom-Jones-like antics of sexual coming-out and self-discovery by/of the book’s appeals-to-just- everyone hero, Pavel (the book is being compared to the Michael York cult-classic Something for Everyone), all seen through the eyes of third parties (the book is being compared to Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon), is “just right”. It’s just so much fun. It’s just — in parts — so laugh-out-loud. It’s just so on-the-mark in its ability to make the reader think he’s right there — when Radovan and Prokop hike the Slovensky raj, when Kristof guides his family’s horse and hay-wagon along a country roadway, when Ingride brags of Pavel’s fondness for her cooking, when Zlatko and Zoltan “get it on” (or try to) in the cramped rural kitchen closet (risking discovery by Ingride as well as the overcooking of Ingride’s cookies).
Rumor has it that Maltese spent one whole summer in Slovakia to provide this book with its just-right “feel” (and “feel-good”), as regards the people, time, and place; I believe it. If all of Maltese’s works — and they’re legion, including short-story collections and novels by mainstream publishers and PODs — portray a definite sense of the author having been there and done that, this book goes even farther to put the reader smack dab into a landscape and culture that, while alien to most of us — in its have-sex-and-be merry / bisexuality-is-A-okay old-world attitudes and sensibilities — makes us comfortable in being there, slightly envious of what’s going on there, blatantly eager to return there — again and again — for another thoroughly enjoyable visit.
There’s going to be talk around the proverbial “water cooler” about this Maltese sure-to-become erotic classic for many years to come. Be sure to get your copy so you won’t be odd-(wo)man out.
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