In the past, a lot of gay fiction suffered from political worthiness or slushy sentimentality. And that was the best of it – let’s not even consider the gay-way-hey or the tragic-gay. With Dennis Cooper, the gay novel -- if it can still be considered a genre -- came out as sexy, dark and disturbing. Dale Peck’s Fucking Martin starts off as innocent and all-American as a gay Huck Finn … but, pretty soon, this version of the gay American dream, like a Cooper character, is having its belly cut open and its entrails spilled.

For his first novel, the author deploys a prodigious and broken narrative line to poetic and disturbing effect. It is 1982 and John, the 19-year-old narrator, flees his sadistic father to become a hustler on the streets of New York. He falls in love with Martin, who soon becomes ill with AIDS. As John unravels his past like onion layers, his feelings are raw and masochistic. The S&M scene with the rifle … oh, you have to read that for yourself!

Dale Peck, Fucking Martin. Vinatage, 1994. £2.86