Although all three share a number of themes and are frequently considered at least partly autobiographical, they do not tell a linear story in the manner of some trilogies, and can be read independently of one another.

[citation needed] The story starts when the narrator, aged 15, experiences the physical side of young love with his twelve-year-old friend Kevin O'Brien.

During a visit to his father over the summer, the protagonist befriends a man from the town that promises to take him to New York for some money.

After experiencing an unrequited crush on his best friend, the protagonist asks his father to be sent to a male boarding school, convinced that the constant interactions with men would help him leave his homosexuality behind.

"[2] Paul Flynn and Matthew Todd call the novel "a touchstone in gay culture just as Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin was in the 30s, Larry Kramer’s Faggots in the 70s".