FIELDING GRAY by Simon Raven (Beaufort: $13.95)....

FIELDING GRAY by Simon Raven (Beaufort: $13.95). Simon Raven is a British novelist all but unknown in the United States, and I confess I had never read a single word of his until asked to review this new edition of his 1967 novel. Why this deplorable state of affairs? It must stop at once. For “Fielding Gray” is a perfect little gem of a story set in 1945, about a young man whose promising life is altered forever because of a boyhood flirtation. Since the flirtation is with another boy instead of with a girl, his society, his school, and even his own mother deem him worthy of contempt and blackmail. Ah, the cruelty of those who wish to help others “be a man”! Seventeen-year-old Fielding is not faultless, but I could scarcely believe the discrepancy between the novel itself (about a young man with sexual needs trying to stop others from ruining his life by sending him away to a tea plantation in India when he wants to study the classics at Cambridge) and the publisher’s dust jacket blather about the hero becoming “corrupted” and “in turn, a corrupter” because of a roll in the hay. For the publisher to mis-sell Raven’s multifaceted novel as about a “careless debauch” is blind and outrageous in its Old Testament sensibility. Furthermore, despite what certain smug characters in the book demand, Fielding Gray has no obligation to love someone who tells him to stay away until he needs Fielding. Indeed, if Fielding had loved Christopher and not “betrayed” him by staying away, he would then have been penalized for “abnormality.” How can he win when he’s damned no matter what he does? As you can see, this book made me care. You’ll care too.