Set in Melbourne for his school years and Sydney for the second half, it will touch a familiar chord with many with its descriptions of Countdown, Brighton Beach and such landmark events in one’s life as a first pair of flares. The isolation of a young gay person growing up is expressed to good effect by the author writing his thoughts and fantasies in italics. His solitary state is broken when his love for John is reciprocated when he is fifteen, and a relationship which will last for sixteen years begins.

There seems to have been little difficulty in being gay at school for Tim; school friends are ultimately accepting (is this a benefit of going to an all-boys Catholic school, I should have converted!) Even his coming out to his parents is relatively uneventful after an initial emotional tug-of-war.

After Xavier College, Tim studies at Monash University and is amazed at how small the openly gay community is. In what is quite ironic, Tim’s school years are more openly gay than his years at University.

Moving to Sydney to study at NIDA, Tim becomes involved with AIDS activism and devises a theatre piece Soft Targets. During the development of the work both he and John are diagnosed as HIV positive, finding out at the same time that they probably contracted the disease before 1981. In a similar mix of humour, honesty and innocence, Tim leads us through the period of early diagnosis, describing in detail the effect it has on his life. Here, the simplicity of the writing really pays off; some of the medical procedures described are overwhelmingly horrifying but are necessary to give the reader some idea of the pain and anguish involved in seeing someone you love suffering. It is all the more chilling given that the author could foresee a similar fate for himself.

Conigrave consistently tries to see things from more than one perspective, while at the same time never minimising the emotional impact others have on his life. Sometimes I suspect he may have been too generous. For instance, when John’s father tries to freeze Tim out of John’s hospital room, he writes:
I was hurt by Bob’s disregard for me but I figured it was because he thought I’d corrupted John, and probably infected him.

Tim Conigrave died soon after finishing Holding the Man. It is sobering to think that this is the only book Conigrave will write, for the intelligence, humour and love with which it is written show a prodigious talent and in other circumstances would augur the beginning of a promising writing career.