Five Married Men Book

This is a self-published book, and it shows. As the author of some self-published books myself, I don't wish to be unfair, but if you're going to self publish, you must either know grammar or spring for the services of a copy editor.

The story is terrific, and addresses a topic that still, several years after the book was written, demands attention: bisexual men, married to women, who also love men (each other, in this case). The tone is harsh and tragic. In some ways it feels overdone, but based on the reactions I sometimes get to my own fiction, which takes a comic, lighthearted approach to the same subject, perhaps not.

I've seen reviews on Amazon that call this book "beautifully written." It is not (imho). Its style is pedestrian and, for this reader, the constant grammatical errors and bad syntax are like being swarmed by mosquitoes. After a while I need to go inside and spray myself with DEET (or read Jane Austen).

But if you're interestd in the topic, I would still recommend this book. As a woman who actually prefers a bisexual husband (or boyfriend), I was dismayed by the harsh portrayal of the wives who simply cannot understand, much less accept, their husbands' feelings. Surely, I want to protest, we're not all like that? But the point of the story is that some of us are. And the story presents a sad, if extreme, picture of the vicious circle that develops when bisexual men, afraid to tell the truth to the women they love for fear of losing them, end up losing them because of their deceit when the truth inevitably comes out.

Given the scarcity of novels that feature bisexual male protagonists, I wish a publisher would pick up Five Married Men and give it a thorough editing, not only cleaning up the grammar, but possibly streamlining the narrative or lightening the style. I suspect I'm attributing superpowers to hardworking, but only human, editors.

From reading the other reviews, I can see that my English-major hypersensitivity is not shared by all readers. If you're interested in reading a novel about a subject that probably affects more marriages than we imagine, it's worth slogging through all the "He invited James and I" leaden prose. But be prepared for a very unhappy ending.