My first novel only received three published reviews - one ecstatic, one complimentary and one neutral. The latter two reviews are
reprinted in full here. The third and longest, from Gay's The Word Newsletter, can be read here.
Gay Times (UK)
November 1990
Weekend, by Martin Foreman, is similarly* honest, though more subdued. Mark is a twenty-eight year old teacher with aspirations to becoming a singer/songwriter.
During the course of the book he looks back at two previous relationships and a third, current affair, that may or may not lead anywhere.
Being set in the past and the present, Foreman gives us a taste of both pre- and post-Aids sexual relationships. Located in London and, briefly, Paris,
Weekend reads like the confessions of a best friend - being full of hope, insecurity
and the need for stability. With detail that anyone who has had a same-sex relationship will recognise, this endearing novel looks at common experience without ever losing our interest. Sebastian Beaumontoriginal
* Beaumont precedes this paragraph with a review of Horse Crazy by Gary Indiana.
Gay and Lesbian Humanist (UK)
Spring 1991
This is an interesting first novel by a young writer. It narrates the story of Mark Robertson, a 29-year-old school-teacher and would-be song-writer, as he reglects alone over a weekend on his past
Third House, UK
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love-life. The interest comes from his experiences mainly with three very different lovers, and their sex together.
Many gay men will be able to identify similar situations and emotions from their own lives.
The different attitudes of Mark's lovers to their sex lives vary from an insistence on absolute monogamy through
acceptance of other casual partners to promiscuity but none of these satisfy him. He is not just self-centred, but a shallow wimp;
not so much narrow-minded as unthinking. The result of his weekend ruminating is to accept himself as he is, and to approve
the promiscuous life he sees as inevitably ahead of him, devoid of its former romantic aspirations.
Mark Robertston comes across clearly as no role-model for romantics.
"... With its interchanging flashbacks it requires concentration, but this is a story which deserves and demands such effort. Martin Foreman has hit the nail on
the head with his first novel. Weekend deserves the widest possible audience and should not be missed."
full review: Gay's The Word Newsletter April-May 1991 (UK)
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