Waiting For The Sky To Fall (A Group Of Aimless Young People Try To Make Sense Of Their Lives In 1950S London) Kenneth Martin Gay Themes,Literature

Octavo. 255 pp. Blue cloth in good order. The jacket is unclipped with minimal wear, and marginal grubbiness to the rear panel. No inscriptions. Tiny hole to pp. 25/26 affecting a few words. Occasional 'ghost shadow' where it looks like a bookmark has been left. All in all a VG copy of this scarce title with, at the time of writing no copies in the UK. Kenneth Martin was born in Belfast and raised in a poor family in Bangor. He began writing his first novel, Aubade when he was sixteen and the book was published as he turned eighteen. It was well-received and, encouraged to continue with his writing career, he moved to London and wrote Waiting for the Sky to Fall. While the book garnered some good reviews, the reception was mixed. A third novel sank without trace and he abandoned fiction for journalism before moving to the US where he gained several degrees at various universities and then practised as a psychotherapist in San Francisco. Waiting for the Sky to Fall follows the story of a group of young people in late 1950s Kensington and Chelsea observed by Perkin Young, who works in a bookshop in Charing Cross Road which sells semi-pornographic photographic photographs under the counter. Painters, writers, musicians, none of them seem anchored to Life. The most prominent, openly gay character, George Tench, who owns a seedy basement nightclub is corrupt in his soul and knows it but his absence of angst is refreshing given the soul-searching of the rest of the cast.