The most cherished historical LGBTQ love stories on my shelf

From the first time I opened the pages of this book many years ago, I fell in love with it.

There is nothing more tender in literature than the sensitive eunuch who falls in love with Alexander the Great, the first man to treat him courteously. Though Alexander returns the love, his energies are divided between his endless battles, his old lover, and his obligatory wife. The intensity of their closeness is kept bright by the boy Bagoas.

Every time I reread this novel, my soul opens.

More than forty years lie between Forster’s beginning Maurice and its publication after his death. 

I came to the novel already adoring Forster’s writing beyond anything. Clive, who is Maurice’s social equal and with whom Maurice is in love, will only love him as a friend though Maurice suffers, wanting intimacy.

When Maurice begins a love affair with the under-gamekeeper Scudder, it seems unlikely to work out because of the great class differences. Breaking the class barrier was almost as heinous as same-sex love. How much we root for the lonely Maurice and his proud yet insecure under-gamekeeper lover!

There is a wonderful book which continues the story called Alec by William di Canzio

The author, for whom Italy has always been a dream, sat down over a period of a few months and poured out this sensual, emotional novel about a love affair of two young men. He never intended to write such book, which proves my theory that we novelists are sometimes the bewildered recipients of the tales sent to us. 

Again, it is the pull between Oliver and Elio which fascinates me. When Elio thinks back on the relationship many years later, Aciman writes some of the most beautiful passages in literature. The page shimmers, the words rise, and the story is more than it was ever meant to be. Sadly, neither young man knew what they had together until it was over.

Boyne is a master storyteller, enormously gifted in doling out a story so that it unfolds bit by bit before us. I am in awe of his skill.

After WWI, a young soldier called Tristan is compelled to visit the sister of a fallen comrade to deliver the sister’s saved letters to her brother. All we know of Tristan is that he has endured something so terrible he at times would prefer not to live. 

What he does not tell is that he was intimately involved with her brother Will a few times, and loves him, but though the intimacy to which Tristan gave his heart was dismissed as nothing by Will. To give everything to another, and then to have the loved one dismiss and deny it cruelly can wear the lover to past endurance.

Which young man was responsible in the end for the conclusion? Unbelievable writing.  

Like so many marvelous novels, this one has traveled through the underground of the fiction world too little known, despite catching many awards and the intense praise of people such as Stephen Fry.

It is set in France during the final bloody months of World War I and features an unexpected love affair between two ordinary young soldiers, Australian and American. What is amazing is that the author is such a vivid, meticulous historian, such a fine military researcher, and yet can write so intimately.

I became so involved with Tommy and David. Will they survive the last months of the war and go on together hiding their relationship from condemning neighbors, or will the war cancel their great love?