Let's Shut Out The World

Whether describing having his hair styled by a gang of eighth-grade bullies; staging a Satan festival in the main hall of Greenvale High; or indulging in inappropriate sex with a caregiver, Kevin Bentley writes with a pen dipped in blood, indignation, and grim whimsy. The autobiographical stories and personal essays in Let's Shut Out the World focus on different pivotal periods and characters in the author's life, from a twisted youth in Texas, to the glittering excesses and sober spirals of life and love in San Francisco in the 1970s, to the monogamous contentment of an unexpected middle age. The narrator of these stories has man trouble aplenty, butting heads and other body parts with everyone from fundamentalist Christians to a slew of "fauxmosexuals" and elusive boyfriends. Bitingly funny and at times harrowingly sad, Let's Shut Out the World provides the back story and sequel to the author's popular memoir Wild Animals I Have Known.