Downloading The H Word

Jonathan Peters is gay, and that is a huge, huge problem. ______________________________________________________________________ Not only is he fifteen years old, but he’s a committed, church-going Christian, he’s in an all-boys’ school, he’s in Yorkshire, he’s in 1979 and his parents voted for Mrs Thatcher. A popular boy with lots of friends, he loves football, reading and rock music, comics, wargames and his cat. He is desperate to win his house tie, to pass Grade Four clarinet, to not finish bottom of the class in Maths, to get his O levels, to play rugby for the school, for the newspaper bag to be lighter, for the bus to school to be less smoky, for the bigger boys in his form to stop picking on him for being small for his age, to get an inhaler for his asthma. This boy is so ‘normal.’ ______________________________________________________________________ Except he isn’t. ______________________________________________________________________ He fancies other boys, and is totally alone as he realises, with increasing horror, that his feelings, dreams and fantasies are truly sexual, that he actually is the worst possible thing in his world, what his friends and family label a ‘homo.’ The H Word charts Jonathan’s journey, from the exuberant thrill of falling in love, through the humiliating shame as the truth dawns, the terrified, frustrated inability to articulate his feelings, the awful pain of losing his boy to someone else, the depression and self-loathing as he himself is rejected, to the final, joyful embrace of his true nature as he, at last, finds the courage to come out, to himself, to his parents and friends, and, at last, to the boy that he loves. ______________________________________________________________________ Please be aware that this book contains language, attitudes and behaviours drawn from their contextual context as well as frequent and explicit references to sexual fantasies and sexual activities by minors.