Download And Enjoy All The Beauty Of The Sun Devised By Marion Husband Available In Interactive EBook

really liked this story, It is a bit dark, Paul isyears old and has lived the life of one much older, He's been to war, he's been married and divorced, he's had many lovers and he's had Patrick, his partner since he met him in the trenches during the Great War.
Patrick and Paul have a deeply convaluted relationship, Patrick has loved Paul since the moment he saw him, Paul is driven mostly by lust and selfpresevation, Patrick sees to that preservation,

Paul is an artist, He and Patrick live in Tangiers an easier place than England for two "bent men" as Patrick calls them.
Paul misses England and wants to go home, at least to visit, A showing of his art in a London gallery provides the opportunity, He goes alone Patrick has no desire for England, In London, Paul seeks out the company of a young man named Eduard he meets at the showing, even though it is clear to him that Eduard is somehow involved with Ann.
Paul can, it seems, sense a new lover, even when the lover is deeply in denial of his sexuality.
Eduard falls, as Patrick did, immediately in love with Paul, Paul is hoping this relationship will free him to be strong, to escape his past, to be able to live without Patrick's ever present protection, to be able to live in England as his own man.
He has not been able to do that to date, somehow caught in his adolescense, defined by the war and his past and his fear.


The story contains lots of twists and turns and interaction of charaters that the reader does not expect Paul's father, his former motherinlaw, his son, his old friend, Matthew.
These people connect to his past and to his present, How will it all sort out Worth the read to find out, At first I thought the unremitting gloom of her style was going to be a challenge but as more and more of the story leaked out a bit like the press feeds the public a scandal the more compelling the book became.
The all encompassing gloom of London in winter is described with diamond sharp accuracy and it sets the mood for a truly tragic novel.
I've never read such a clear description of the depression and breakdown that infects society after the carnage of war.
Interesting if a bit confusing at times, The confusion is due to the interweaving of several storylines which leaves you wondering where you're jumping to or from between one chapter and the next.
Paul has returned to London to exhibit and sell his paintings and sketches of the war, While there he meets Edmund, an intriguing youth he has an affair with, His father is having an affair with the mother of Paul's ex wife, Then there is Paul's life in Tangiers with Patrick and their shared history of the war, These are but a few of the interweaving stories, I look forward to the conclusion of this trilogy, Superb. I just love the way Marion Husband writes, There is not a single rock left unturned, This book was a little confusing and for a while, I thought I had already read it, but then figured out what she had done.
Very glad to see these folks again from this point in time,
Great job!
A more satisfying story than The Boy I Love, I felt I got a better understanding of the main character Paul Harris and his motivations for behaving the way he does.
Would have appreciated some follow up to the story of how Mick and Hetty were getting on : This new title in the series is set in plot/time between Husband's novels The Boy I Love and Paper Moon.
the period between the great wars Lawrence Hawker, a successful gallery owner stages the first exhibition of works by a painter highly recommended by a mutual friend.
The paintings depict wartime portraits of soldiers in the trenches in painful yet tender poses/scenario some with controversial homoerotic overtones.
Thus sets the stage for the return of Paul Harris, who leaves behind lover and protector Patrick, as hes lured back to his homeland from his North African exile by potential fame and fortune but has to face old ghosts and past misdeeds.


Husband reintroduces characters from The Boy I Love Pauls father, his son, his exinlaws, warbuddies but also introduces an exciting cast of new characters associated with the art world Ann ingénue, model, Edmund very young, aimless wannabe artist, Joseph upandcoming painter whos fighting

Edmund for Anns attentions.
With sinisterlike behindthescenes machinations is Matthew expriest, exsoldier, ruined mind whose connection to several of these aforementioned characters go far deeper and darker than can be imagined.


Despite his resolve Paul falls into a heady affair with the much younger Edmund, whos exploring his sexuality and seeking new direction for his life.
George Harris acts against better judgement when he reunites Paul with Bobby, his own son left behind when he escaped overseas from homosexual persecution will this act lead to further heartache and disaster.
New choices face Paul when torn between having or losing his son all over again, and to what extent does his recent infatuation with Edmund impact on his longtime relationship with Patrick.
And what will the faithful, loyal Patrick do when he also returns to London to retrieve Paul from the dilemmas and disasters of his own making

Marion Husband writes complicated, conflicted characters brilliantly they straddle the very fine line between maudlin and overlytortured.
She brings to life the indecision, flawed desires and wanton passion, good intentions and broken resolutions of all her gay / straight / male / female characters.
Strong character development and backstories are capably provided for all main and secondary characters, and as usual, the resolution for many of their storylines remain unpredictable and tension provoking until the satisfying end.


All The Beauty Of The Sun can be read without reference to others in Husbands series, but I urge readers to make every attempt to read The Boy I Love before attempting this.
All my expectations for a riveting characterdriven read were fulfilled by the author yet again, sitelink blogspot. co. uk/ This is a sequel of sorts to Husband's "The Boy I Love" which I reviewed in, It's a little confusing because the three books in the series, "The Boy I Love", "Paper Moon", and "All the Beauty of the Sun" were written in the order above, but the timeline is: "The Boy I Love", "All the Beauty of the Sun" and "Paper Moon".
This is important if you were setting off to read them all in orderand I highly recommend you do because these books are stellar.
Simply the pinnacle of gay historical fiction,
Husband's prose suits me perfectly, I'm quite aware that this more literary style won't be everyone's cup of tea but I find her level of detail, her love for the minutiae in the depth of great emotion to be one of her greatest assets.
She's not content with someone walking with some distress through London streets with skillful use of layering detail on detail she brings the scene to live through sights, scents, sounds, even touch.
The effect of this is not only to show the protagonists emotional state, which literary fiction must rely on, but to immerse you entirely into the scene, sometimes you feel so close that you wonder that the characters can't see you, peering in on them.


Paul Harris, whose story is more or less the mutual thread in the series, has returned from Tangiers, where he's been living in exile with his lover, Patrick, in order to show his war paintings in a London gallery and hopefully to sell them.
He's uncertain as to whether the trip was sensiblehe's an ex convict, and would be in danger one again should his homosexuality be exposed againand he's left Patrick behind.
He is anchored with PatrickPatrick was his sargeant in the war, and Paul learned in the trenches to rely on Patrickand it is Patrick that pulled Paul out of more than one terrible problems in the previous book.


Sadly though, Paul is very much "if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you are with" so anyone who dislikes this ethos might want to avoid.


His story interweaves with the others in the story, Ann, the "good time girl" and artists' model, Lawrence, straight but probably more on his wavelength than any, the gallery owner and artist, Joseph Day, love rival for Ann, and Edmund, public schoolboy and bicurious gay virgin.
Some of it is written in third person, some in first, some in stream of conciousness, so if that literary style isn't for you, you might not want to try it, but I think you should because the writing is so utterly beautiful.


Even when it is recounting the worst of timesdeath in the trenches being one dark subject, the prose remains clear and honest.
This isn'tfor those who find World War One unreadablesomething that dwells heavily on the trenches, It's mentioned and obviously the effects of the war still resonate with everyone, physically and mentally, but it's not the only factor.
Paul has more demons than just the war, oh yes indeed,

I can't help but care for Paul passionately, I felt tremendously sorry for him, and the things he does in London were unwise, but I felt he was a leaf, blown about by fate and he didn't have the fibre to hold himself upright.
I think any pretty young man would have captured him, Despite what he purports to feel about Edmund, I was never fully convincedI don't think he could separate love and sex, and Edmund was relatively untouched by the war.
He lost a brother, but he was too young to have been in himself, Perhaps it is that aspect of Edmund that draws Paul, like a moth to a flame,

I did find the relationships rather confusing, and they lent heavily on coincidence, Everyone seemed to know everyone else, Ann for example, who Paul has only met through Lawrence and Edmund, knowsand has had a relationship withMatthew, a man who has spent years in hospital, the war drove him mad.


It's hard to describe the plot, because other than the thread of Paul of Edmund there isn't really much of onebut that's no detriment.
Rather it's a "slice of life" we start watching these characters at a certain point, and we stop at a certain point.
There's no definitive ending, no neat tying up of plot lines, because this deals with life, and of course life doesn't have genre ending.


All of the charactersand there are more than I've described, all of whom are connected to Paul in some way or otherare fully fleshed out, their actions and reactions explored and consequencesor the threat of consequencesworried about.
I take my hat off to Husband, because she is a master juggler of plotlines, how she does it, and with such a deft touch is beyond me.


So, don't miss this seriesif you love the power of words, words rich in layer and tone without swamping themselves in the morass of "this is literature" you will love them.
Can't recommend them enough.

As a final note, I have to mention the covers, The trilogy has been republished by Accent Press with new covers and they are terribly misleading, On each cover as you can see there's a close up of a beautiful woman with a war/London backdrop.
Seeing that in a bookshop makes one think that you are getting a standard women's fiction book or a romance.
Granted, the back makes it clear that the story revolves around Paul and his loves but the cover It's baffling.
If the publisher was actually afraid to put a picture of a man on "The Boy I Love" and "All the Beauty of the Sun" then it's rather misrepresenting, and once a reader buys a book thinking it's one thing and finds that actually it's gay romance with some scenes with more description than the average nongayfictionreader can cope with, they probably won't come back.
I would have much preferred a more honest cover, but this doesn't affect the five star mark, of course.
Following on from 'The boy I love', this is set around the mid's, I enjoyed this marginally less than that previous book, but only because I found the story line frustrating and slightly unsatisfying.
Though Husband does write conflicted bitches and flawed characters very well,

I loved, as in the last book, the most beautiful descriptions of desire and passion that I've read in a while and this still made the book a worthwhile read.


Sometimes, the bleakness of it all gets quite intense and heavy, but it works, not least because of the illegality of homosexuality, and of course the horrific post war suffering of trauma and loss on so many levels, which colours and defines the story anyway.
Another wonderful book. .