G.A.A.Y.: One Hundred Ways to Love a Beautiful Loser - Softcover

Anto Broderick believes it is his duty to 'live life as an Abba song', dreaming of pop stardom: 'I want my face to greet everyone else's in their morning paper. I want my voice to be sung along to badly while housewives hoover. I want my smile on bedroom walls where girls sigh and wish I wasn't gay.' He spends his days at a telesales company, 'mouthing sales-speak inanities into a headset microphone'; at nights he hits the clubs and bars in the company of 'beautiful losers, arty idiots and atheistic bitches'. As gay as they come ('I sprang from the womb in a prom dress'), Anto is cursed with parents who are 'sporty...G.A.A. sporty'. His father is a football coach, 'one of the natural enemies of the gay child'. But sport suddenly attains a fresh allure when he falls under the spell of footballer Khalid Kashani, Anto's sister's boyfriend. 'He's black, he's Brit, and he looks every inch the bum-boy,' declares Anto's Da. Can Anto pry Khalid away from his sister? Is Khalid straight, bi or gay? Will Anto succeed in his mission to make Khalid come out? G.A.A.Y is a funny, moving, bittersweet story of thwarted love and lust. Driven by rapid-fire dialogue and a lyrical vision of modern romance, Jarlath Gregory's characters enact a tragicomic drama played out against the backdrop of modern Dublin in all its grime and glitter.

Jarlath Gregory grew up in Crossmaglen, County Armagh. His first novel, Snapshots, was published by Sitric Books in 2001.