The Cure for Sodomy

...can write something that grabs you by the scruff and throws you around that you really have to take your time to digest it. I'm working my way through, savoring every nasty bit disturbed at my arousal.

Shakin, Ken. "The Cure for Sodomy", Harrington Park Press, 2006. Blistering, Raunchy Fun Amos Lassen and Cinema Pride Sometimes a bad attitude can be fun to read about as in "The Case for Sodomy" a hot new novel. It is erotic and raunchy and well written, honest and rude at the same time and also very funny. The novel tells about gay life until the 21st century began some seven years ago. It is almost as if erotica and investigative reporting were stirred up together and served to you hot. "The Cure for Sodomy" is a satire on the way we live and it must be taken as such. It will hit your emotions hard and you won't know whether to laugh or cry or both. Shakin manages to mesh gossip and history together to give us a truly entertaining read. Here is the story of the sodomites but more specifically of a youth who is oversexed, a good Catholic boy who takes the cure for homosexuality. We sometimes forget that sodomy is still considered a crime in several states in America. We are taken on a rough ride to Sodom in a story of desire that never seems to end. It is the story of the need for sexual release in a world that will not allow it to happen. As we listen to two guys discussing the state of sexuality in the modern world (over a cup of coffee). What they talk about is a revelation which is cruel and funny, absurd and outrageous but it is a story of perversity in the modern world. This is one of those books that will capture you from the first page. While the sex is very hot, it is the humor of the book that makes it a winner. Yet it is not overt humor--it is hidden between the lines. Using the freaks of New York City as his main characters, Shakin delivers many plays on words. It is almost impossible not to like this book. It is so clever and so wild that it just grabs you and doesn't let you go. You will remember it for a long, long time and every once in a while you will still have a chuckle about it.

I wasn't sure about the title, but once I picked up the book I couldn't stop reading on. The sex and social satire is titilating, but the humor is between the lines. Wonderful word play. The characters are such New York freaks, I laughed out loud in more than a few places. I'd read Love Sucks, his first book, the highly acclaimed New York story collection, but this is a novel and has the breath and pace of a very long story. Certainly something to read late at night, in bed.