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Re: Reggie Oliver
I'm glad I'm not the only person who has noted the negative depiction of homosexuality in Flowers of the Sea. From my Goodreads review of the book (in 2015):
"One thing I've noticed with this book is that the homosexual characters are almost uniformly horrible and unpleasant people, be they pedophiliac Peter Kurten-style serial killers (see "Singing Blood"), sadistic gangsters who #### other men to death (as in "Charm"), or alcoholic/nihilistic cowards ("Lightning," the penultimate story). One could point out that some of the other stories (such as "A Child's Problem" and "Lord of the Fleas") deal with equally unpleasant heterosexual antagonists, but I think this is balanced by the fact that there are at least a few narrators/main characters who we're meant to see as somewhat sympathetic: by contrast I think the only gay character who comes off well in this book is Alex in "Lightning," though he only appears on one page and even then one must make the assumption that he's gay. Ah well, not all gay people are good (obviously), and I suppose I shouldn't complain too much as the antagonistic characters noted above are still more interesting to read about than many of the (it must be said) stuffy and overly well-mannered/respectable narrators."
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