Book review: Seán Hewitt's memoir shows the isolation and unhappiness many gay men feel

Writing this memoir, Seán Hewitt felt the need to hide identities other than his own under pseudonyms and dislocating methodology

All Down Darkness Wide by Seán Hewitt is a literary memoir

Thirty-three is an early age for a memoir but Seán Hewitt, born in 1990, offers us his. Now lecturing in Trinity College Dublin, he was born in Warrington, England, and took his first degree at Girton College, Cambridge.

Hewitt opens his story among the dead in the cemetery of St James’s Oratory in Liverpool, the city of his postgraduate studies. He is in the graveyard to meet someone — to have sex with him. After the deed, Hewitt stoops down to a stream to palm water into his mouth, “cleansing himself back to sanctity”. He is down in the wide darkness and needs ablution and absolution.