Full Circle

Full Circle by Michael Thomas Ford is the story of two childhood friends who grow up experimenting with gay sex before they can even give their exploration of each other’s bodies a name. While one has a predeliction to play the field the other, who narrates the tale, tends toward more monogamous relationships and feels betrayed when others stray. In telling the story of these lives Ford lays out the history of the gay movement, the Vietnam War, and the scourge that AIDS becomes in the gay community.

With its insights into the dynamics of family life, boyhood relationships, the high school and college experience, growing maturity and self-awareness, military life, this book rises above the level of most gay literature to become in part a sociological and psychological examination of modern society. Beginning with a phone call in the middle of the night in the present day, the narrator takes us back to the story of his grandparents and parents, his birth, and his life to the point where the phone rings. As impressed as I was with the first two-thirds of the book I began to get incredulous at the idea that one person could have been involved in the lives of so many important historic personages and as struck as I was with the aptness of the first half of the book the author seems to have run out of steam at some point along the line and the eventual closing chapters seem truncated and incomplete.