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A.B. Gayle

Two brawling, ornery country boys who waded through a lot of crap to find one another.”

Reviewed in the United States on September 7, 2016

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The above quote from the book sums it up pretty well. Set initially in the latter part of the 1990's the story revolves around the homophobia and dread of being gay in the "country" back then. Small town bigots, people using Old Testament religion to justify their hatred make this a pretty harrowing read at times. But the two men survive even if scarred mentally and physically.
To balance this is a vivid picture of life in the Appalachians. The good people, the scenery, the food. Boy, the food! I'd never heard of half the dishes they cooked or talked about, but I kept getting these urges to get up and eat!
I hope that times have changed and gay people are accepted better than they obviously were back then.
Coming from a different country where, even if homophobia exists it has rarely been this vitriolic or pervasive and where the press isn't nearly so invasive, I found it hard at times to connect with this story. Maybe the fact it was written in third person past tense rather than first person present contributed to my difficulty. The italicised thoughts jumped out at me rather than flowed as they usually do in Jeff's writing.
Once I got used to it, and the story was less in Brice's head as he stopped wallowing in his misery and started interacting more with others, the dialogue and action flowed better.
There were some great moments. The one of Annie calling down fire and brimstone on the preacher brings a smile to my face whenever I think of it.
If you've read his essays and stories, a lot of the themes will be familiar. Packed full of all the things that are important to Jeff, Country is a homage to the music and era it is set in. Makes you want to give credit to all those who survived it and those who were allies.

Gary McCann

Their intimacy sees two men through difficult times

Reviewed in the United States on December 18, 2018

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In Country we see both the isolation of being in the closet and the isolation of being openly gay but despised by your non-gay community, cut off from your livelihood, physically threatened, and emotionally abused till you’re suicidal. The significance of the novel lies in the fact that in many parts of the world, even many parts of America, some people face this choice.
Outed country music star Brice Brown might not be welcome in some parts of his home state of West Virginia, but he eventually finds a welcome in the arms of Lucas, a young man initially ambivalent toward Brice owing to his own painful history.
The prose is photographically perfect, scene after scene so real, the intimacy so uncensored, you feel almost like an intruder. But then you remember that you were invited into this frank slice of life in two men’s lives, as they come to grips with each other and the world around them.

Ulysses Grant Dietz

I’m really glad to have read this book

Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2017

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It was so interesting to read this book on the heels of having read J.D. Vance’s plodding memoir ”Hillbilly Elegy” for my (straight) men’s book group. (The straight part was an accident—I was invited by another gay man, and so assumed….) Jeff Mann is, from what I can tell, the same kind of Southern rural boy that his characters Brice and Lucas are. I’m also guessing that he’s my age, since, given the time setting of the book, Brice would be exactly my age. This is a book written today, set in the near past—but a near past dramatically different. It is also a book about an aspect of the “gay community” for whom those of us who live in East Coast liberal bubbles rarely spare a thought. I’m really glad to have read this book, because it allowed me a look into a worldview very different from my own. It is a worldview that produced voters who brought the current president to power; but it is also full of poetry and beauty and the love of nature.

And food. Oh my God, the food!

“Country” is not really about the country music industry, even though Brice Brown is the whipping boy of everything wrong with that industry as the central theme of this story. This book is not about Nashville, but about the cultural and geographical roots of the music that Nashville has promoted the way Detroit produces automobiles. “Country” is about living a lie and seeking to abandon that lie for something real and authentic. It is about conservative evangelical Christianity and the irreparable damage it causes to young people who find out they’re not straight. Ultimately it is about finding the courage to go on when your only other option is despair.

Brice Brown is a big country star, until his own shame at his love for men blows up in his face and ends it all. The narrative follows Brice through a series of psychological and geographical stages, moving from Nashville, to his home town of Hinton, West Virginia, to a remote valley in the West Virginia hills where an outrageous aging queen runs a refuge for country children rejected by their families for being gay. It is here that Brice meets Lucas Bryan, thirteen years his junior, whose own tale of injustice and violence has left scars that make Brice’s seem paltry.

Jeff Mann spins a great yarn, but more importantly, he builds key characters who manage to represent all the good that exists in these red-state hills of our America. Brice doesn’t even try to defend himself, simply acknowledging his own shame and fear as unavoidable in the world he inhabits, as he pushes himself to break free. Brice is not an entirely admirable guy. He’s weak and driven by his appetites. But his epiphany—forced upon him because of the damage he caused someone else, someone he should have loved—is powerful. His road from self-pity to self-reliance is rocky, and sometimes exhausting. But it’s a good tale, well told.

It’s clear that Mann is writing for a gay male audience (or perhaps the straight female m/m audience as well) and thus the book is centered as much on Brice’s sex life as it is on his emotional/romantic evolution. I’m not objecting, but I merely note that this pretty much guarantees that all the straight men who read J.D. Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy” will never read “Country.” And that’s too bad, because they might learn something, if they were brave enough to go there.

Top reviews from other countries

Michael Wild

Original

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 11, 2020

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Having read a vast number of gay fiction books I realise how much pulp is available. It is therefore a great relief to find something original.
It is far from perfect, but it has an original voice.

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