Product Description

Jonathan Carey, a youth worker at a London drop-in centre for the unemployed, finds himself drawn to Stewart, a man involved with a strange gang in which sex is as important as crime. Can Jonathan save Stewart from the dark allure of the criminal underworld?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #606777 in Books
• Published on: 1998-09-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Customer Reviews

Gripping (pardon the pun)
I took this book on holiday with me and couldent start enjoying my holiday until I had finished it. It was so enthralling, very erotic, graphic, but combined with a superb storyline that kept you aroused from beginning to end. and unlike a lot of books nowadays very easy to read, you dont have to turn to your dictionary every five minutes.

I live in Islington, around the area where the book is set which made it more realistic, thinking that all this could be going on around me, but even if you dont know the area it could of been set in any part of Britain.

I would of given it 10 stars if allowed, a must read go and buy it !!

An excellent first novel well worth reading...
If anything defines the human condition, it is the urge that most of us control on a daily basis: sex. Humanity is sex-orientated, and in the absence of the ideal partner, a right hand or other substitute will often stand in to bring satiation of this primal drive. In Rough with the Smooth Dominic Arrow explores these issues, looks at all the possible relationships that men can have with one another and shows us how the exploration of these issues can bring about changes in people.

Jonathan Carey, a social worker at a drop-in centre called St Marks, is a young gay man who has recently split up with his former partner. We get the impression of a man, highly skilled and motivated, who uses St Marks as a means to fill his life with something meaningful. His clients, among the roughest of London, all unemployed, many of them down-and-out, take the place of the children he never had - he tends over them as a shepherd tends his sheep. His favourite particular sheep is young Stewart.

Stewart, 22 years of age, by all accounts stunningly good looking and straight, falls in with the wrong gang - Carello's men. Stewart combines the adulthood and world-knowledge that comes all too hard to men of his type, and a naivete that can seem laughable on occasion. He is so desperate to prove he is in control, to prove that he is able, that he ignores the warning signs and gets pulled deeper into the criminal underworld, eventually to his own detriment.

Meanwhile, back at St Marks, two further plots are unfolding. Firstly, the council is threatening to withdraw funding from the project, and secondly, the men have discovered that sex isn't just fun with women. All of the plots and subplots draw together in a satisfying climax (if you'll forgive the pun).

All our favourite stereotypical fantasy character-types are represented, from the closet-queen to the straight man who likes it up the bum, from the man who is comfortable with his sexuality to the man who is unsure of his sexuality, from the power-crazed man who uses sex as a tool in his twisted life to the man who just wants a shag, from the young scared boy to the older man who takes him under his wing.

Fear not - this is homoerotic fiction at it's best, and sex is sprinkled throughout the book (every other page to be precise), but the exploration of the possibilities of sex is what makes the book interesting.

In short, Dominic Arrow has written a novel which will appeal to all readers of homoerotic stories, and even to some readers who enjoy character exploration. I would have to give the book ten out of ten, and given that is the first novel by this author, I would strongly recommend that you not only read it, but also look out for future works. Are you man enough to take the rough with the smooth?

very readible
It is often said ' could not put this down'. With rough with the smooth, it's true. A good plot, possible, and book very readable.