The Tin Box may have seemed like a really promising novel but it turns out to be a bit underwhelming. William Lyon is working on his dissertation and took a job as a caretaker of a unused old asylum in the small town of Jelly Valley. With the divorce from his wife being finalized, William is still in the process of coming out of the closet and his very repressive past. While checking out the asylum, he discovered a tin box containing letters from a patient whose plight so clearly reflects his own. Then he meets flamboyant and outgoing Colby Anderson who works at the general store and is very openly gay. Through Colby, William learned to let go and decided to live his life the way he wanted to. With their budding friendship turning into romance, William also needs to prove to Colby that he's ready to take what they have into the next level and make the owner of those letters from the tin box proud.There was a really good concept here that somehow failed to materialized. Those letters inside the tin box tore me into pieces and they would have been a great starter for the story to follow a different and more involved romance between William and Colby. It's just too bad that as the story goes on, it went downhill and became a snoozefest. I feel that there should've been more to it in connection with the letters. Sadly, that was not realised at all. Rating: 2 out of 5 stars You wouldn't think that a gay romance novel would actually have a social conscience. Or if it did, you would think it would be a lighter lesson, not a history of the way gay men and women were treated by a medical profession that viewed them as diseased. And not in the way that would make those same professionals look upon a patient with kindness and compassion, it's the kind of disease that makes the patient immoral, crazy, and dangerous. As hard of a time it is to grow up gay now, I can't even fathom growing up in a culture that allows the forced imprisonment of gay men and lesbians, that allows every sort of medical experimentation to be preformed upon them, that allows full frontal lobotomies in order to "cure" the perversion that is rotting the brain. I can't imagine the fear that would instill in someone, constantly looking over their shoulder, having to hide who they are in order to stay alive. The self hatred that would impose on most people would be heartbreaking by itself, but the fear of falling in love, of allowing yourself to be happy, knowing it could go horribly wrong on so many levels, to keep that as far from yourself as you can, would be a soul shattering way to live.As a gay man in the here and now, I know that is the life that many gay men and women have to lead in many countries. Middle Eastern and African countries are rife with stories of men, some in their teens, being killed for kissing someone they are attracted to. All you have to look is towards Uganda who just made being gay punishable by death, or the way Russia is starting to treat it's gay citizens as lepers and criminals. I know that those horrors exist in the world, and that while I can still get bashed in this country, I'm not scared of living my life to the fullest. But that wasn't always the case, it wasn't even 60-70 years ago that these same attitudes existed in this country. I always joke that I would have loved to be born in the 20s because of the music and movies that came out in the 30s and 40s. I would have loved to have around when it was first coming out. To see the new Thin Man movie the weekend it came out, to go to a dinner club and dance to the beat of my favorite music, would have been heaven to me. But then reality sets in and I start imagines the rest of my life as a gay man, and I am forced to realize that I was born at the right time.I don't want to you think that this book is heavy and depressing, because it's not. I won't lie, reading Bill's letters had me tearing up at times, but the romance between William and Colby made up for that. You can see a lot of Bill in William, but thankfully, William is living in the right times, even if he is going through some of the same issues of self doubt. William had already taken the first step by leaving his wife, though he decides to hide out soon after that. Coming into contact with Colby sort of forces the issue, and the two of them strike up a friendship that grows into something more. He ends up having the relationship that Bill wanted to desperately in the past, a relationship between to loving adults who don't have to hide how they feel.
What do You think about The Tin Box (2013)?
Oh my word. That last letter. It just broke me. I'll be back to review.
—Hword123
