Fag Hag (Robert Rodi, 1993)

I picked Fag Hag up in a charity shop once a long time ago and I've often picked it off the shelf and then put it back again. I don't know what kept putting me off, maybe I thought it would be a poorly-written piece of trash peopled with campy stereotypes. Anyway, once I did take the plunge I barely stopped reading it and had finished it within a week as I really got into it. 

Telling the tale of Natalie Stathis devotion to her best gay friend Peter and her machinations to keep him single so that he will eventually decide the love of his life is her, Fag Hag is a hilarious, gripping morality tale peopled with believable characters, lampooned stereotypes and a cracking protagonist in Natalie. Faced with a nemesis in Lloyd, a philosophizing gun-store owner and Peter's new found love, Natalie gradually unravels, becoming more and more unhinged, until she takes drastic measures - planting a bug in the happy couple's bedroom in order to find a lever to prise them apart, and eventually resorting to kidnap - all of which is told through witty prose that shows how unstable Natalie has become while not rendering her unsympathetic. 

Along the way Natalie has to battle with her over-baring mother and her new boss, who has been a fag hag and even ended up marrying her gay friend. Reading a gay tale from the early 1990s it's nice to see the spectre of AIDs barely mentioned and to see a gay couple realistically and lovingly portrayed. I loved every minute of time I spent with Fag Hag and the crazy Natalie Stathis and I'd gladly search out more of Robert Rodi's work.