Safe as Houses

"A gay novel about family values". -- Edmund White"While other novels are content to show us the surface of gay lives, Safe as Houses brings us inside in ways that enlighten and illuminate" -- Michael BronskiHighly praised on its original hardback publication (Faber, 1995), Safe as Houses is the story of Allen Pasztory, the hearing son of Hungarian-born deaf parents. When Allen eventually finds a partner for life, Jeremy comes complete with a five-year-old son, and in due course the pair also foster Allen's outcast gay nephew Kit. In a rich and complex tapestry, the lives of Allen and his loved ones are threaded together into an alternative family with its unique traumas and joys. This is a book about being different: being deaf, being the hearing child of deaf parents, being gay or lesbian, being a gay man and a lesbian who marry and have a child, being the son of two gay men.