Different People

by Orland Outland

Book Overview

Ever since high school, Cal Hewitt and Eric Hamilton have had a thing for each other. But they are so different, so opposite, neither has had the nerve to do anything about it. Over more than a decade... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 155583826X
• ISBN13: 9781555838263
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: Alyson Books
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.4" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Almost my biography...

This is a wonderful, though at times, heart wrenching book. I wish that there had been more interaction between our two protagonists. Perhaps I related too much to Cal's loss of everything... last of all dignity. I was once there.

compelling

interesting insight and description of the meth addicted lifestyle of a gay man in san francisco. haunting imagery that stays long after one sets down the novel.

Captivating, even after it's over!!!

Since I graduated highschool, and have yet to take a lit. class while in college, I haven't done much reading. This is the first book, honestly, that I've read.. cover to cover.. since I graduated. Absolutly the best book I've read, and one I would definatly recomend to everyone. The way that Outland brings us into the world of Cal and Eric and their families and friends is unique to this book. Not only do you see into the important, key times in the lives of Cal, Eric, Gina, Emma, and Carol you also see into the mundane, and the ordinary, to see that not only were they people, but they could be real people, just like you and me. Being gay also adds an intersting twist to the story, because I can look at it from a vantage point of being close to the story, but not part of it. The story is not my own, but it could very well be, and that is just plain frightening. It could be me; it could be you. And I am so glad that I read this one.. one problem with the book... I didn't want it to end. Not that the ending was bad...

Art imitating life

The provocative book jacket notwithstanding, author Orland Outland's "Different People" may be about gay life and relationships, but it's not one of those books that eludes the gay sexual escapades of which fantasies are made. Instead, it is a novel in the mainstream sense and, though fiction, smacks all too bittersweetly of reality, and the main characters can easily be straight or anything else. "Different People" refers to main characters Cal Hewitt and Eric Hamilton (for whom the former has the hots) and how the circumstances of their different lives doom any chance for love, until a series of tragedies brings the pair together again, after literally a lifetime of passing acknowledgments. Love and romance blossom then, but the reader is made all too painfully aware that it's to be an all-too-brief time of happiness for both men. But how Cal and Eric get to that point is sometimes all too real: one tightly closeted and full of homophobic hate for himself, the other an out-and-out gay stud, and their separate journeys that end with them taking a chance on love with each other winds through Reno, Nev., San Francisco and New York City. On their way, Cal and Eric each have their stories, all of them all to real like death of loved ones, AIDS, addiction and, to some extent, self-destruction by way of drug abuse and risky sex. "Different People," being mainstream-caliber, may be too tame for the well-versed gay reader, but distinguishes itself as smacking of truth although fiction. And in many, many respects, Cal and Eric could have been straight or a man and woman couple, so applicable are their experiences to the mainstream.

One of the best books I've read this year

An amasing story. flowing and tantalizing. Rich characters and very good descriptive writing that made me feel what they are going through down to the last tingling sensation. I cried with them and was really dissapointed when the book ended.