BOOK REVIEW / Paperbacks: Sex with Strangers - Geoffrey Rees: Penguin, pounds 5.99

It is rare to find a contemporary gay novel which does not mention the Acronym, and indeed this cool debut resolutely avoids any sensationalism, asking only that homosexuality be taken for granted. So laid back is Rees that, in telling of a young man's initiation into the gay rites of Chicago, he puts his reader in a similar relation to the characters as (according to the title) they are to each other: when you finish it, this cohort of sad, hollow, demoralised young people are still strangers to you.