Why read Gaywyck?

Book cover of Gaywyck

Book description

Gaywyck is the first gay Gothic novel. Long out of print, this classic proved that genre knows no gender. Young, innocent Robert Whyte enters a Jane-Eyre world of secrets and deceptions when he is hired to catalog the vast library at Gaywyck, a mysterious ancestral mansion on Long Island, where…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Gaywyck as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Larry Mellman

Author

First published in 1980, Gaywyck was the first historical gay gothic romance. Virga, whose day job for forty years was as photo editor, turns his extraordinary eye on turn-of-the-last century New York.

The tangled lives, dark secrets, and mad love – all conventions of the romance genre – are stood on their heads in this reimagining. “I realized genre has no gender,” Virga says, and set about cannily reversing roles and inverting tropes to fashion a puzzle wrapped in an enigma of requited and unrequited love.

Gaywyck stands the test of time and remains a modern classic.

From Larry's list on The best historical fiction with a twist.