The Exceptional Optimist. "Positive" by David Menadue. [review]

Abstract

Menadue is a charming storyteller, self-reflective and free of cant. He charts his uneven acceptance of his own homosexuality; the compartmentalisation of his life between work, family and sexuality; the exploration of sex in casual and fleeting encounters; and his ambivalence about romantic entanglements. Through his involvement in gay and trade union activism in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and with the good fortune of gay-friendly employment, Menadue grows in confidence. "Positive", although engagingly written, is not a poetic book, but it is an important testimony of one man’s survival of a latter-day plague.