Slovakian Boy Paperback – August 13, 2004

Descriptive action and landscape, interesting characters.

As a writer myself (DIARY OF A HUSTLER), and as someone with a day/night job, I don't find myself with nearly as much time as I'd like, these days/nights, to sit down and read a book. When I do find the time, I want a book that'll provide me a genuinely good time.William Maltese's SLOVAKIAN BOY provides a really good time. I'm talking a really-really good time. It manages the same kind of humor (subtle and laugh out loud) that I try to provide in my writing, and that's what makes this a book one I so thoroughly recommend (little persuaded as I was, with my short attention span, by others' more literary references that compare this one to Scherazade, or "Six Degrees of Separation", or Satyricon).Maybe I found this book so entertaining because I so "related" to Pavel, the young Slovakian boy, and hero, trying to come of age (and come out). If he does what he does in faraway bucolic Slovakia, he's -- nonetheless -- still just as much a trying-to-find-his-way teenager as a lot of us are, or as a lot of us once were (no matter where we are/were at the time).An admitted fan of Maltese's writing, he's done himself big-time proud, with this one. Take it from me: SLOVAKIAN BOY is a genuine keeper (and a probably a destined-to-be classic of the gay coming-out/coming-of-age genre to boot!).