Bep
Author: Tyrone Grima 
Publisher: Horizons / 2013
Extent: 253pp

A perhaps not PC title would be Tales from the Other Side but then the outcome of the story would be the same: on either side of the sexual divide there lie moments of intimacy, days of hope, and days of anxiety, love and disillusionment, the pain of separation, and when the dreams of yesterday become the despair of today.

The story is told by Nick, a librarian who becomes the moving spirit in a government agency that promotes sexual equality. On a chance meeting, he meets Bep, an orchestra director and composer whose physical appearance transfixes Nick.

Boy meets boy and a love story begins. But then something starts going wrong. Bep has deep questions about his sexuality and about morality. Nick is a believer and his prayers to God are very much influenced by the Gospel and by the church ritual and stock prayers until he gets disillusioned.

It is a story of pain, a pain that Nick suffers down to physical pain. He hardly understands why he had to suffer so much until all is revealed and then his pain is even more intense.

He is all alone in his pain as his parents do not understand what is going on and the only person who seems sympathetic is the family doctor who is prone to sermonizing.

Nick's colleagues at work seek their own interests but then they rally round when they see Nick in pain. But neither colleagues nor chance acquaintances can assuage the pain.

This book is some six years old, when gay Maltese literature must have been at its beginning. The story of Nick and Bep is a love story lived in pain.