The Guy Thing

Reviewed by John Holland --short fiction author and organiser of "Stroud Short Stories" Like his last collection of short stories, Odds Against', the proceeds from his new collection, The Guy Thing', go directly to support the Huntingdon's Disease Association. The Guy Thing' has more in common with Odds Against' than that. Again, Harris has provided a beautifully written and emotionally uplifting collection. The eponymous title of the opening story in this collection, The Guy Thing', is about suicide. When faced with a suicide attempt by a fellow student, the main character recalls a pastoral session in his school sixth form in which a respected senior teacher addressed the students about his personal experience of suicide. For Harris, The Guy Thing' is/are the repressed feelings of men, which typically explode into a negative reaction. Throughout this collection the male characters battle their emotions in order to find a more positive, more appropriate response to crises. The stories are compassionate and positive. The past, especially the school years, is often a factor to the decisions made by the key characters. Harris writes with both understanding and heart about men and boys from all backgrounds - gay, straight, lonely, new to this country, ill, injured or suicidal. Throughout this collection the male characters battle their emotions in order to find a more positive, more appropriate response to crises. The stories are compassionate and positive. The past, especially the school years, is often a factor to the decisions made by the key characters. Harris writes with both understanding and heart about men and boys from all backgrounds - gay, straight, lonely, new to this country, ill, injured or suicidal. One of his best stories, The Daniel Album, is an exceptionally tender tale of love and friendship between a young gay man and a young straight man. Another, Terms and Conditions, reveals a university student seeking funds by becoming a porn star, but Harris has him controlling his involvement so that ultimately it leads to a new and successful life. In Planet Past, it is the young granddaughter whose love for her grandfather brings sense and understanding to a family struggling to cope with his dementia. Bruce Harris's stories draw in the reader. He is a natural story-teller, and despite the overwhelmingly positive, uncynical story lines, and the fact that you may occasionally find your eyes becoming watery, he always avoids sentimentality. But there is an honesty and vulnerability to many of these stories. And they are about something important. "Bruce Harris' stories are imaginative and emotive, with glimpses of profound psychological insight. His characters are yearning, refractory, idiosyncratic - in short, real. That alone would compel me to read his work, but the clincher is his delightfully mischievous sense of humour. A writer I'm happy to recommend."