Diary of a Gay Priest is one of the funniest and sanest memoirs I’ve ever read

IF IT’S TRUE what they say about everybody “having a book in them,” there’s a good chance that the book is a personal memoir. In what seems lately to be a large subset of a genre—the gay-coming-of-age literary memoir—comes Melanie Hoffert, a surprisingly Zen breath of fresh air.

… Stories for Boys is ostensibly about Martin’s father, who in his early sixties attempts suicide. This comes as a surprise, since the father had always seemed the rock of the family while the mother, who suffers from bipolar disease, has occasionally been hospitalized. What triggers the father’s attempted suicide is his wife’s discovery of gay pornography on their computer. …

CHARLES BEYE’S MEMOIR begins like a l9th-century novel: the narrator’s second wife, to whom he has not spoken in years, is dying, and his children are begging him to visit her. Not only does he refuse, but when she dies he suspects that she willed herself to expire just to avoid his visit. …