Lamda Literary: 20th Century Limited

lambdalitlogoDamian Serbu - Lamda Literary Reviews
October 13, 2013

The maturation of LGBT literature provides a vast array of authors, genres, and styles from which a reader chooses what books to enjoy. What a pleasure to see such diversity for our community, which once struggled to publish even the best of writers. New authors abound, coming from a solid amount of publishers. Yet within the new and unique, I often long for the familiar, the safe and sure hands of a polished writer known for creating literary classics that will always remain important works of gay literature. Picking up Felice Picano’s latest volume, 20th Century Un-Limited, provided this kind of comfort and assurance. I can’t imagine being in the hands of a better storyteller.

Picano journeys down a daring and dangerous path in these two novellas, which take up time travel as their principle subject. In the first, Christopher Hall begins in the current era, enjoying life just past middle age, when a strange encounter leads him on an expedition back to the 1930s. The second story introduces the mystery of disappearing people, all somehow connected through different ages by a plot of land in Wisconsin. Thank the writing gods for Picano’s skill because in a less adept hand, these time-bending scenarios could confuse the reader or prove so maddeningly unrealistic that even the most fervent science fiction enthusiast’s head might spin. Instead, Picano weaves in and out of different decades, centuries even, with ease, explaining the plot and setting so effortlessly that it reads as clearly as a chronological history.

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