THE FOURTH ANGEL

Cob, Manny, Jerry, and Shell may call themselves angels, but they're really just a bunch of freaky and semi-freaked out sixteen year-olds in dusty El Paso, where they pass their time taking drugs, exposing each other's hangups so as to desensitize themselves (it's a nasty world, specially if you have feelings), and spooking older fags. Nobody is better than the author of The City of Night and Numbers at exposing the physical longings which generally remain politely hidden or conventionally expressed behind the social facade; and, as in his other works, the world and the objects in it function mainly as catalysts for the revelation of the repressed sexuality of his dark creatures, generally an acknowledgment of homosexuality that has been sensed but not articulated until the forced but forceful climax. This novel is as much about ourselves as today's new lost generation -- a concise, ugly, powerful work that may very well be Rechy's best.