Our Book Club: Book Selection & Organizational Issues

[michaelflanagansf]

Just a quick reminder to all here - we begin discussing 'A Boy's Own Story' next monday (in its own thread here in the book section).  We begin with the first third (through page 82 - the end of chapter 3).  I look forward to seeing you all there.

[michaelflanagansf]

Okay - I'm moving the second poll to the thread:

What should our second book selection be?  (Voting closed: July 02, 2006, 01:44:26 PM)
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez    - 0 (0%)
Jesus' Son - Denis Johnson (not religious)    - 2 (5%)
Perfume - Patrick Suskind    - 2 (5%)
God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy    - 5 (12.5%)
Dirt Music - Tim Winton    - 1 (2.5%)
The Power of the Dog - Thomas Savage    - 4 (10%)
Magician's Assistant - Ann Patchett    - 1 (2.5%)
American Gods - Neil Gaiman    - 2 (5%)
Far Pavillions - M.M. Kaye    - 0 (0%)
Front Runner - Patricia Nell Warren    - 10 (25%)
Housekeeping - Marilynne Robinson    - 0 (0%)
Three Junes - Julia Glass    - 1 (2.5%)
A Boy's Own Story - Edmund White    - 12 (30%)

[michaelflanagansf]

Here are some comments on the third book club selection list - I was looking for shorter books (under 300 pages) for August.  Many book clubs do not meet in August as people go on vacation.  I thought that if we could keep our selections shorter that we could still keep going (although I'm aiming to begin this reading the week after the BBQ in Texas so that we will all be present and accounted for - so reading will begin on August 14th and discussion will begin on August 21st).

Two of the selections on the list are writers who were in the 'Violet Quill' group with Edmund White, our current author.  One is the late Robert Ferro - his 'The family of Max Desir' is a coming out story from the period of 'A Boy's Own Story' and I thought it might interest readers here (and give you a chance to hear one of the voices silenced by AIDS that was a contemporary of White).  The other is 'Looking Glass Lives' by Felice Picano.  It's from the 90s and I thought this would give readers a notion of the progression of some of writers from this group after the AIDS epidemic began - and some of the different themes they dealt with later in their careers.

I've included a shorter work by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Of Love and Other Demons) to substitute for the other longer work that was on the last list.  Four other books (Jesus' Son, Perfume, The Power of the Dog and Housekeeping) appear from the last list.  Some of the longer books from the last list (such as 'The Front Runner') will appear again on the September list.

Lucy Gayheart by Cather was a suggestion I received for the book club via p.m. - keep that in mind if you have suggestions you would like me to include.  The last picture show by Larry McMurtry seems (to me) like it would fit in well here - it was a McMurtry novel made into a film that has to do with 'coming of age' difficulties.  And Rag and bone by Michael Nava is my one 'wild card' selection here - it's a mystery that takes place in L.A. with a gay detective protagonist.

I'll be posting reviews shortly.

[michaelflanagansf]

Of Love And Other Demons - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

From Library Journal
In a Latin American port city during colonial times, a young girl named Sierva Maria de Todos los Angeles the only child of the ineffectual Marquis de Casalduero is bitten by a rabid dog. Her father, who has shown no interest in the child, begins a crusade to save her life, eventually committing her to the Convent of Santa Clara when the bishop persuades him that his daughter is possessed by demons. In fact, Sierva Maria has shown no signs of being infected by rabies or by demons; she is simply being punished for being different. Having been raised by the family's slaves, she knows their languages and wears their Santeria necklaces; she is perceived by the effete European Americans around her as "not of this world." Only the priest who has reluctantly accepted the job as her exorcist believes she is neither sick nor possessed but terrified after being inexplicably "interred alive" among the superstitious nuns. Nobel Prize winner Garcia Marquez writes with his usual inventiveness, but over the years his prose style has crystallized and condensed. The result is a tale whose sharp social retort is made all the louder by the luminous, uncluttered telling.

Jesus' Son - Denis Johnson

Amazon.com
The unnamed narrator in Jesus' Son lives through a car wreck and a heroin overdose. Is he blessed? He cheats, lies, steals--but possesses a child's (or a mystic's) uncanny way of expressing the bare essence of things around him. In its own strange and luminous way, this linked collection of short fiction does the same. The stories follow characters who are seemingly marginalized beyond hope, drifting through a narcotic haze of ennui, failed relationships, and petty crime. In "Dundun" the narrator decides to take a shooting victim to the hospital, though not for the usual reasons: "I wanted to be the one who saw it through and got McInnes to the doctor without a wreck. People would talk about it, and I hoped I would be liked." Later he takes his own pathetic stab at violence in "The Other Man," attempting to avenge a drug rip-off but succeeding only at terrorizing an innocent family. Each meandering story--some utterly lacking in the usual elements of plot, including a beginning and an end--nonetheless demands compulsive reading, with Denis Johnson's first calling as a poet apparent in the off-kilter beauty of his prose. Open to any page and gems spill forth: "I knew every raindrop by its name. I sensed everything before it happened. I knew a certain Oldsmobile would stop for me even before it slowed, and by the sweet voices of the family inside that we'd have an accident in the storm."

The most successful stories in the collection offer moments of startling clarity. In "Car Crash While Hitchhiking," for instance, the narrator feels most alive while in the presence of another's loss: "Down the hall came the wife. She was glorious, burning. She didn't know yet that her husband was dead.... What a pair of lungs! She shrieked as I imagined an eagle would shriek. It felt wonderful to be alive to hear it! I've gone looking for that feeling everywhere." In "Work," while "salvaging" copper wire from a flooded house to fund their habits, the narrator and an acquaintance stop to watch the nearly unfathomable sight of a beautiful, naked woman paragliding up the river. Later the narrator learns that the house once belonged to his down-and-out accomplice and that the woman is his estranged wife. "As nearly as I could tell, I'd wandered into some sort of dream that Wayne was having about his wife, and his house," he reasons. Such is the experience for the reader. More Genet than Bukowski, Denis Johnson lures us into a misfit soul's dream from which he can't awake. --Langdon Cook

Perfume - Patrick Suskind

Library Journal
Suskind's demented protagonist, Jean-Baptist Grenouille, is a "gifted abomination" whose highly developed sense of smell could easily make him the greatest perfumer of all time. Given the general stench of 18th-century cities, good perfumers were held in high regard. However, Grenouille the misfit, scorned by society throughout his life, hasn't the heart to create pretty perfumes for society's elite. When he finally does earn the adoration of the masses through his twisted genius, he decides that he would much prefer to "exterminate all these stupid, stinking people from the earth."

From 'The New Republic'
The great historical novels of our timeare not to be found in the ponderous costume epics that fall off the airport book racks. (These merely mirror the pathetic fallacies of the 20th century.) They are to be found, rather, in works like Carlos Fuentes's Terra Nostra, Graham Swift's Waterland, Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, and now Patrick Suskind's Perfume. These books go beyond historical decor to grapple with the elusive poignancies of time, memory, and persistence. Historians sometimes imagine fondly that the indeterminate boundaries between fantasy, historical narrative, and authorial argument in all these works sets them sharply aside from their own "scientific" endeavors to recover the past wie ist eigentlich gewesen. But if the rise of a new kind of historical novel does nothing else than dispose of these childish relics of a collapsed positivism, they will have been worth the writing. Meanwhile they stand as an urgent reminder that in a present where the past has a dauntingly short shelf life, history is becoming too important to leave to the historians.

The Power of the Dog - Thomas Savage
From Publishers Weekly
First published in 1967 to critical raves, Thomas Savage's The Power of the Dog now includes an afterword by Annie Proulx. It traces the tense relationship between two bachelor brothers, Phil and George Burbank, on a Montana ranch in the 1920s. When George marries a widow, Phil, a bullying, repressed homosexual, terrorizes his new sister-in-law. And when her teenage son comes to the ranch, things get even more complicated. This is just the first reissue of a long-out-of-print book by Savage, hailed as a true master of the western genre. I Heard My Sister Speak My Name is scheduled for this fall, retitled The Sheep Queen.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Set in 1920s Montana, Savage's 1967 novel introduces the Burbank brothers, whose lives are permanently altered when one falls in love with a widow and brings the woman and her son to live on their isolated ranch. LJ's reviewer praised the novel, saying, Savage is a writer who can really write, and who never lets his style get in the way of his plot (LJ 2/15/67).
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The family of Max Desir - Robert Ferro
from quc1003 - an Amazon reviewer:
Max Desir comes from an old Italian family, but his parents left the old country and made a new home for themselves in New Jersey. As he grows up, Max discovers his own preference for men, but nothing ever becomes too serious. Until he meets Nick during a trip through Italy. They live together for a few months in Rome, then move back to the U.S. when they decide it's time to settle down.

John, Max's father, doesn't take to the idea that his son is a homosexual; his mother, Marie, accepts her son and acts as a buffer between the two. But after 15 years of keeping them civil, she succumbs to cancer, and John struggles to accept both Max and Nick while dealing with the loss of his Marie.

This is a beautiful story about a family dealing with old values, acceptance and death. The character of Max is one of the strongest I've read, and I emapthized with him. I could feel his anger and confusion, his sense of loss, his struggle to be accepted and to have Nick accepted by his father as part of the family. Very realisitc, too, in its rendering of the family and how it reacts to obstacles placed in its way.

Housekeeping - Marilynne Robinson
From Publishers Weekly
Their lives spun off the tilting world like thread off a spindle," says Ruthie, the novel's narrator. The same may be said of Becket Royce's subtle, low-keyed reading. The interwoven themes of loss and love, longing and loneliness—"the wanting never subsided"—require a cool, almost impersonal touch. Royce narrates natural and manmade catastrophe and ruin as the author offers them: with a sort of watery vagueness engulfing extraordinary events. Occasionally this leads Royce to sound sleepy or to glide over humor. But she expresses Ruthie's story without any irksome effort to sound childlike, and she avoids the pitfall of dramatizing other characters, such as the awkward sheriff, the whispery insubstantiality of Aunt Sylvie or the ladies bearing casseroles to lure Ruthie away from Aunt Sylvie and into their concept of normality. Originally published in 1980 and filmed in 1987,  Anatole Broyard said: "Here is a first novel that sounds as if the author has been treasuring it up all her life...."

Lucy Gayheart - Willa Cather
From Amazon reviewer Robin Friedman:
Willa Cather's short poignant novel was written in 1935. The story takes place in the early twentienth century and contrasts the American plains, the small town of Haverford, Nebraska, with Chicago, large urban American with its promise and perils. The heroine of the book, Lucy Gayheart, has great pianistic talent. She leaves Haverford at the age of 18 to study piano, and to give music lessons, in Chicago.

In Chicago she meets a great but disillusioned and world-weary singer, Clement Sebastian, and has the opportunity to work with him as an accompanyist. There are wonderful descriptions of Schubert song-cycles: the Winterreise and the Miller's Lovely Daughter. She ultimately is seemingly faced with the choice between Sebastian and her hometown sweetheart.

Faced with tragedy from both men in Chicago, Lucy returns home. She gears herself to begin life anew but tragedy again intervenes.

There is a great deal of description in the book of the snow andthe cold, in both Chicago and Haverford. The book also has for me a feel for the tragic sense of life, with a hint of the power of art and religious faith to overcome it. The opposition between city life and provincial town life is similar to Sinclair Lewis's Main Street but with more depth and craft in the writing. The love for music, the human voice and the piano eloquently comes through the book.

This is a beautifully wrought book which deserves to be better known.

The last picture show - Larry McMurtry
Amazon.com
In The Last Picture Show Larry McMurtry introduced characters who would show up again in later novels, Texasville and Duane's Depressed. This first volume of the trilogy drops the reader into the one-stoplight town of Thalia, Texas, where Duane Moore, his buddy Sonny, and his girlfriend Jacy are all stumbling along the rocky road to adulthood. Duane wants nothing more than to marry Jacy; Sonny wants what Duane has; and Jacy wants to get the hell out of Thalia any way she can. This is not a novel of big ideas or defining moments; over the course of a year Duane and Jacy make up and break up, Sonny begins an affair with his high-school football coach's wife, and the only movie house in town closes its doors forever. Yet it is out of these small-town experiences--a nude swimming party in Wichita, a failed sexual encounter during a senior trip, a botched elopement, an enlistment--that McMurtry builds his tale and reveals his characters' hearts. No epiphanies here, just a lot of hard-won experience that leaves none of his protagonists particularly wiser, though they're all a little sadder by the end. --Alix Wilber

Looking Glass Lives - Felice Picano
Amazon.com
Before he began writing fiction primarily marketed to a gay readership, Felice Picano was a noted author of suspense and supernatural tales. Smart as the Devil and Eyes were critical and popular successes when they were released in the mid-'70s, and Picano returns to the genre with Looking Glass Lives, a contemporary gothic thriller that draws upon such diverse sources as Robert Nathan's classic novel Portrait of Jennie and Kenneth Branagh's film Dead Again. As with all of Picano's fiction (especially his bestselling 1994 novel, Like People in History), Looking Glass Lives is compulsively readable and always surprising. Roger Lynch, his wife, Karen, and his cousin Chas are caught in a dangerous, sexually fraught emotional ménage è trois, but only when Roger begins to unearth the deep, tormented secrets of their small New England town's history does he comprehend the real crux--and horror--of their relationship. Picano understands his characters and is unafraid to explore and expose their most intimate emotional and sexual needs. But he is also a master of suspense, and as Looking Glass Lives hurtles towards its shocking climax, we are both disturbed and terribly pleased to have been on the trip. --Michael Bronski

Rag and bone - Michael Nava
Amazon.com
Rios, a gay Hispanic lawyer, has been described as an "outsider" hero, dedicated to finding justice in a world where it seems to be a highly perishable commodity. His keen intelligence is matched by his vulnerability, in this case to the emotional demands placed on him by a sudden heart attack that leaves him wondering whether life is still worth living, and the news that his sister, a former nun, once had a daughter, who has been found and then lost again. Tracing Vicky and her 10-year-old son Angel isn't that difficult for Henry. An abused woman hiding from a violent ex-husband doesn't have that many ways to disappear. But there's something about Vicky that doesn't fit the abuse profile, and when she's charged with killing Angel's father, Henry is torn between his desire to free her and his sense that there's more to the story than she's telling him. There is, of course, but it's the multidimensionality of his central characters rather than the mysteries they're caught up in that drive Nava's perceptive, brilliantly explicated novels. Love in its many guises drives this one--love between Henry and John, the first man to touch Rios's heart in many years, and love for Angel, the nephew in whom he sees a chance to redeem his own unhappy childhood. Nava leaves his series hero in their good hands, with a new career as a judge ahead of him. And he leaves his devoted readers hoping he'll change his mind and bring Henry back again, perhaps this time from the bench instead of the bar. --Jane Adams

[playitagain]

Michael, I see Andrew Holleran's new book, Grief, is a short novel.  Any chance of adding this to our list for August reading?

[michaelflanagansf]

Michael, I see Andrew Holleran's new book, Grief, is a short novel.  Any chance of adding this to our list for August reading?

Done!  Although I do feel a bit bad for Mr. Holleran as he hasn't had the benefit of being on as long as some of the other authors.  I may need to bring him back for the next list.  Thanks for the suggestion.

There was a suggestion for another E. White book and just as an fyi for the readers here I thought I'd mention that I am trying not to repeat authors and that's why Annie Proulx didn't appear on the list again either.  After 6 or so books maybe we can expand start repeating authors, but in the beginning I think it would be a good idea to select a variety of authors.

Though Holleran, Ferro and Picano were all members of the Violet Quill (with E. White) I feel that they are different enough to merit inclusion (Ferro because of his young death, Picano because the selection in question is a gothic novel and Holleran because it has recently been published).

[michaelflanagansf]

Grief - Andrew Holleran

Since the 1978 publication of The Dancer and the Dance , Holleran has been recognized as one of the most prominent voices in gay literature. In his latest novel, he addresses grief, both personal and historical. For years, the unnamed narrator has been caring for his mother, visiting her regularly after her confinement to a nursing home. Now she has died and seems to have taken with her his reason for living. A friend arranges a guest professorship and a room in a Washington, DC, townhouse, and the narrator tries on this new life for a few months. In his rented bedroom, he finds a copy of Mary Todd Lincoln's letters, and her grief becomes entangled with his grief and the grief of all gay men of a similar age who have seen so many friends stolen from life by AIDS. In addition, he starts identifying with his landlord's dog, shut away in the study while his master is at work. Though slim, this rewarding volume is densely packed with feeling for those who have been lost, have held themselves back and not become what they might have been, or have been so afraid to love that now they find themselves alone.

Library Jounal - June, 2006

[playitagain]

There's an interview with Holleran in today's salon.com http://salon.com/books/int/2006/07/29/holleran_int/

[Dave Cullen]

Thanks, Michael. Good list. It was tough for me to vote: I'm in love with both "Jesus' Son" and "Housekeeping."

The PW review of Housekeeping is for the CD audio edition, though (that's all Amazon has) and I think it's just awful. I pulled one of the two spotlight user reviews from Amazon which I think captures it well:

HOUSEKEEPING is a book that is a joy to read, simply by virtue of the carefully constructed yet flowing language employed by the author. It's a challenge for the reader to pace themselves so as not to pass by any of the innumerable shining passages that lie within. The novel speaks to the heart and soul about the transitory state that our lives exemplify, of our expectations and their consequences on our experiences of life.
There is a history of tragedy -- both real and as perceived by those on the outside -- in the family depicted. The story is told by Ruthie -- she and her sister Lucille (who is younger, but more socially aware and mature) have been orphaned. Their mother has delivered them to the home of their grandmother in the small, remote town of Fingerbone (great name!), then disappeared -- they learn later that she has driven in a friend's car off a cliff into the nearby lake, where their grandfather perished many years before when the train on which he was riding left the bridge and plunged into the icy waters.

Ruthie and Lucille are raised for a time by their grandmother. She is a reserved, slightly distant woman -- but she loves them in her own way, caring for them and seeing to their needs. At the beginning of chapter 2, on p. 29, the girls awaken to find her dead: '...after five years, my grandmother one winter morning eschewed awakening.' Enter their two great aunts, Lily and Nora, who move to Fingerbone from San Francisco (giving up their cherished lifestyle and home, as they remind the girls quite often) in order to care for Ruthie and Lucille. These two are some of the most gently comic characters I have run across in years -- perhaps because they remind me a bit of my own great aunts, with whom I spent a lot of time when I was a child. The conversations between them are priceless -- I actually had tears running down my cheeks from laughing. Lily and Nora don't last long -- they don't die, but they're simply not up to the task of caring for two young girls. The reality of it overwhelms them completely -- they begin to imagine every conceivable scenario of disaster and flee back to the city, having lured the girls' aunt Sylvie to take over for them.

Sylvie is a piece of work -- and her character and influence on the girls is the mighty engine that drives the rest of the story. She has long been separated from the rest of her family, traveling all over the country as a transient, 'riding the rails' from one place to another. She is a brilliantly-drawn character, gentle and thoughtful (if a bit odd -- although I hope for my own sake that trait never becomes a crime...). Neither of the girls not the good people of Fingerbone know quite what to make of her. She definitely has her own ideas about things -- she goes into deep, long silences, almost as if, for her, time doesn't exist. Sylvie begins to fill the house with odd collections of things -- empty tin cans with their labels removed, newspapers and magazines. Leaves begin to pile up in the corners of the room -- a visible reminder of her own ideas about 'the essence of housekeeping'.

Besides being an immensely entertaining story and a literary jewel, the book is a treasure trove of wisdom. It addresses the concept of human need and offers one of the most shining promises of fulfillment and hope that I have seen.

I knew when I picked up this book that it had been made into a film -- I put off watching it until I had read the novel, wanting to experience the richness of the written word first. The film is good, if low-key -- if you haven't seen it, definitely read the book first. This is one of the finest reading experiences I've had in recent years -- I can wholeheartedly recommend it, but PLEASE take your time and savor every word...!

---

I disagree with that review only on the last point. Bill Forsythe's film is wonderful, but if you want to experience both, definitely see it first. the book will enrich it coming afterward.

Ten years after reading this book, I'm still moved by the gulf between ruth and lucille. almost too painful to recall, but also somehow uplifting. Although it revolves around three girls/women, I think many gayguys here will find the painful gap between them extremely resonant to our own lives. And there's a whole lot of Ennis in this book.

[michaelflanagansf]

Just a note - the older book club threads (Edmund White's 'A Boy's Own Story' and Annie Proulx's 'Postcards') have now been moved - they are now here:

http://davecullen.com/forum/index.php?board=63.0

As we proceed from month to month with new books the older book club threads will get moved to this area.

mf

[dejavu]

Michael,
Since I'm new at this, I reread this whole thread to see how books get nominated.  Are you working on the next list yet, since we're more than halfway through reading The Last Picture Show?

I thought I'd toss out an idea and see what happens:  Another Country, by James Baldwin.  Read it once probably 30 years ago and don't remember much except that it was a good read.  Set in New York, with a wide mix of characters (white, black, gay, straight, men, women, in quite a few overlapping relationships).  Not a book of "adolescence" as the last two books have been.  Would be interested to discuss with the book club.

One other idea, from the New York area:  Manhattan Transfer, by John Dos Passos.  This one I've never read but would like to, however it would take some motivation from the book club to get me started.

Other than that, ideas include some regional fiction in areas other than the west; or some historical fiction.  But whatever we vote on, I'll be happy as long as I can get hold of the book.  (I know of at least person who intended to be in on the TLPS discussion, but who had only gotten the book two days before discussion started and never caught up.  He would have had some interesting contributions; I'd known previously that he was interested in it from a PM.)  So, I hope we find out soon what we're supposed to order.

[michaelflanagansf]

Actually, yes, I am working on the next list.  And I had already been thinking of 'Giovanni's Room' by Baldwin for the list.  I thought that would be interesting as it's a novel that deals with homosexuality that was written in the 50s.  I was also thinking of including Gore Vidal's 'The City and the Pillar' on the list, as that was written in 1948.

Michael,
Since I'm new at this, I reread this whole thread to see how books get nominated.  Are you working on the next list yet, since we're more than halfway through reading The Last Picture Show?

I thought I'd toss out an idea and see what happens:  Another Country, by James Baldwin.  Read it once probably 30 years ago and don't remember much except that it was a good read.  Set in New York, with a wide mix of characters (white, black, gay, straight, men, women, in quite a few overlapping relationships).  Not a book of "adolescence" as the last two books have been.  Would be interested to discuss with the book club.

Other than that, ideas include some regional fiction in areas other than the west; or some historical fiction.  But whatever we vote on, I'll be happy as long as I can get hold of the book.  (I know of at least person who intended to be in on the TLPS discussion, but who had only gotten the book two days before discussion started and never caught up.  He would have had some interesting contributions; I'd known previously that he was interested in it from a PM.)  So, I hope we find out soon what we're supposed to order.

[dejavu]

Actually, yes, I am working on the next list.  And I had already been thinking of 'Giovanni's Room' by Baldwin for the list.  I thought that would be interesting as it's a novel that deals with homosexuality that was written in the 50s.  I was also thinking of including Gore Vidal's 'The City and the Pillar' on the list, as that was written in 1948.

Thanks for the quick reply.  I modified my earlier post to include another book after you copied it.

Both of the above sound find; read them both long ago, although if I'm not mistaken City and the Pillar is a real downer.  I'll go with Giovanni's Room if they both come up in the poll.

[michaelflanagansf]

I'm moving the third poll to the thread so the 4th poll can be put up.

What should our third book club selection be?  (Voting closed: August 04, 2006, 11:16:03 AM)

Of Love and Other Demons - Gabriel Garcia Marquez    - 1 (3%)
Jesus' Son - Denis Johnson (not religious)    - 5 (15.2%)
Perfume - Patrick Suskind    - 2 (6.1%)
The Power of the Dog - Thomas Savage    - 3 (9.1%)
The family of Max Desir - Robert Ferro    - 0 (0%)
Housekeeping - Marilynne Robinson    - 2 (6.1%)
Lucy Gayheart - Willa Cather    - 2 (6.1%)
The last picture show - Larry McMurtry    - 12 (36.4%)
Looking Glass Lives - Felice Picano    - 0 (0%)
Rag and bone - Michael Nava    - 3 (9.1%)
Grief - Andrew Holleran    - 3 (9.1%)

[michaelflanagansf]

Here are reviews for the fourth book for the book club

Grief - Andrew Holleran

Since the 1978 publication of The Dancer and the Dance , Holleran has been recognized as one of the most prominent voices in gay literature. In his latest novel, he addresses grief, both personal and historical. For years, the unnamed narrator has been caring for his mother, visiting her regularly after her confinement to a nursing home. Now she has died and seems to have taken with her his reason for living. A friend arranges a guest professorship and a room in a Washington, DC, townhouse, and the narrator tries on this new life for a few months. In his rented bedroom, he finds a copy of Mary Todd Lincoln's letters, and her grief becomes entangled with his grief and the grief of all gay men of a similar age who have seen so many friends stolen from life by AIDS. In addition, he starts identifying with his landlord's dog, shut away in the study while his master is at work. Though slim, this rewarding volume is densely packed with feeling for those who have been lost, have held themselves back and not become what they might have been, or have been so afraid to love that now they find themselves alone.

Library Jounal - June, 2006

The Front Runner - Patricia Neil Warren

First published in 1974, The Front Runner raced to international acclaim - the first novel about gay love to become popular with mainstream.
In 1975, coach Harlan Brown is hiding from his past at an obscure New York college, after he was fired from Penn State University on suspicion of being gay. A tough, lonely ex-Marine of 39, Harlan has never allowed himself to love another man.

Then Billy Sive, a brilliant young runner, shows up on his doorstep. He and his two comrades, Vince Matti and Jacques LaFont, were just thrown off a major team for admitting they are gay. Harlan knows that, with proper training, Billy could go to the '76 Olympics in Montreal. He agrees to coach the three boys under strict conditions that thwart Billy's growing attraction for his mature but compelling mentor. The lean, graceful frontrunner with gold-rim glasses sees directly into Harlan's heart. Billy's gentle and open acceptance of his sexuality makes Harlan afraid to confront either the pain of his past, or the challenges which lay in wait if their intimacy is exposed.

But when Coach Brown finds himself falling in love with his most gifted athlete, he must combat his true feelings for Billy or risk the outrage of the entire sports world - and their only chance at Olympic gold.

The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy

With sensuous prose, a dreamlike style infused with breathtakingly beautiful images and keen insight into human nature, Roy's debut novel charts fresh territory in the genre of magical, prismatic literature. Set in Kerala, India, during the late 1960s when Communism rattled the age-old caste system, the story begins with the funeral of young Sophie Mol, the cousin of the novel's protagonists, Rahel and her fraternal twin brother, Estha. In a circuitous and suspenseful narrative, Roy reveals the family tensions that led to the twins' behavior on the fateful night that Sophie drowned. Beneath the drama of a family tragedy lies a background of local politics, social taboos and the tide of history?all of which come together in a slip of fate, after which a family is irreparably shattered. Roy captures the children's candid observations but clouded understanding of adults' complex emotional lives. Rahel notices that "at times like these, only the Small Things are ever said. The Big Things lurk unsaid inside." Plangent with a sad wisdom, the children's view is never oversimplified, and the adult characters reveal their frailties?and in one case, a repulsively evil power?in subtle and complex ways. While Roy's powers of description are formidable, she sometimes succumbs to overwriting, forcing every minute detail to symbolize something bigger, and the pace of the story slows. But these lapses are few, and her powers coalesce magnificently in the book's second half. Roy's clarity of vision is remarkable, her voice original, her story beautifully constructed and masterfully told.

Jesus' Son - Denis Johnson

Amazon.com
The unnamed narrator in Jesus' Son lives through a car wreck and a heroin overdose. Is he blessed? He cheats, lies, steals--but possesses a child's (or a mystic's) uncanny way of expressing the bare essence of things around him. In its own strange and luminous way, this linked collection of short fiction does the same. The stories follow characters who are seemingly marginalized beyond hope, drifting through a narcotic haze of ennui, failed relationships, and petty crime. In "Dundun" the narrator decides to take a shooting victim to the hospital, though not for the usual reasons: "I wanted to be the one who saw it through and got McInnes to the doctor without a wreck. People would talk about it, and I hoped I would be liked." Later he takes his own pathetic stab at violence in "The Other Man," attempting to avenge a drug rip-off but succeeding only at terrorizing an innocent family. Each meandering story--some utterly lacking in the usual elements of plot, including a beginning and an end--nonetheless demands compulsive reading, with Denis Johnson's first calling as a poet apparent in the off-kilter beauty of his prose. Open to any page and gems spill forth: "I knew every raindrop by its name. I sensed everything before it happened. I knew a certain Oldsmobile would stop for me even before it slowed, and by the sweet voices of the family inside that we'd have an accident in the storm."

The most successful stories in the collection offer moments of startling clarity. In "Car Crash While Hitchhiking," for instance, the narrator feels most alive while in the presence of another's loss: "Down the hall came the wife. She was glorious, burning. She didn't know yet that her husband was dead.... What a pair of lungs! She shrieked as I imagined an eagle would shriek. It felt wonderful to be alive to hear it! I've gone looking for that feeling everywhere." In "Work," while "salvaging" copper wire from a flooded house to fund their habits, the narrator and an acquaintance stop to watch the nearly unfathomable sight of a beautiful, naked woman paragliding up the river. Later the narrator learns that the house once belonged to his down-and-out accomplice and that the woman is his estranged wife. "As nearly as I could tell, I'd wandered into some sort of dream that Wayne was having about his wife, and his house," he reasons. Such is the experience for the reader. More Genet than Bukowski, Denis Johnson lures us into a misfit soul's dream from which he can't awake. --Langdon Cook

Rag and bone - Michael Nava

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Rios, a gay Hispanic lawyer, has been described as an "outsider" hero, dedicated to finding justice in a world where it seems to be a highly perishable commodity. His keen intelligence is matched by his vulnerability, in this case to the emotional demands placed on him by a sudden heart attack that leaves him wondering whether life is still worth living, and the news that his sister, a former nun, once had a daughter, who has been found and then lost again. Tracing Vicky and her 10-year-old son Angel isn't that difficult for Henry. An abused woman hiding from a violent ex-husband doesn't have that many ways to disappear. But there's something about Vicky that doesn't fit the abuse profile, and when she's charged with killing Angel's father, Henry is torn between his desire to free her and his sense that there's more to the story than she's telling him. There is, of course, but it's the multidimensionality of his central characters rather than the mysteries they're caught up in that drive Nava's perceptive, brilliantly explicated novels. Love in its many guises drives this one--love between Henry and John, the first man to touch Rios's heart in many years, and love for Angel, the nephew in whom he sees a chance to redeem his own unhappy childhood. Nava leaves his series hero in their good hands, with a new career as a judge ahead of him. And he leaves his devoted readers hoping he'll change his mind and bring Henry back again, perhaps this time from the bench instead of the bar. --Jane Adams

The Power and the Glory - Graham Greene


How does good spoil, and how can bad be redeemed? In his penetrating novel The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene explores corruption and atonement through a priest and the people he encounters. In the 1930s one Mexican state has outlawed the Church, naming it a source of greed and debauchery. The priests have been rounded up and shot by firing squad--save one, the whisky priest. On the run, and in a blur of alcohol and fear, this outlaw meets a dentist, a banana farmer, and a village woman he knew six years earlier. For a while, he is accompanied by a toothless man--whom he refers to as his Judas and does his best to ditch. Always, an adamant lieutenant is only a few hours behind, determined to liberate his country from the evils of the church.

On the verge of reaching a safer region, the whisky priest is repeatedly held back by his vocation, even though he no longer feels fit to perform his rites: "When he was gone it would be as if God in all this space between the sea and the mountains ceased to exist. Wasn't it his duty to stay, even if they despised him, even if they were murdered for his sake? even if they were corrupted by his example?"

As his sins and dangers increase, the broken priest comes to confront the nature of piety and love. Still, when he is granted a reprieve, he feels himself sliding into the old arrogance, slipping it on like the black gloves he used to wear. Greene has drawn this man--and all he encounters--vividly and viscerally. He may have said The Power and the Glory was "written to a thesis," but this brilliant theological thriller has far more mysteries--and troubling ideals--than certainties. --Joannie Kervran Stangeland

The City and the Pillar - Gore Vidal

Book Description
A literary cause célèbre when first published more than fifty years ago, Gore Vidal’s now-classic The City and the Pillar stands as a landmark novel of the gay experience.

Jim, a handsome, all-American athlete, has always been shy around girls. But when he and his best friend, Bob, partake in “awful kid stuff,” the experience forms Jim’s ideal of spiritual completion. Defying his parents’ expectations, Jim strikes out on his own, hoping to find Bob and rekindle their amorous friendship. Along the way he struggles with what he feels is his unique bond with Bob and with his persistent attraction to other men. Upon finally encountering Bob years later, the force of his hopes for a life together leads to a devastating climax. The first novel of its kind to appear on the American literary landscape, The City and the Pillar remains a forthright and uncompromising portrayal of sexual relationships between men.

Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin

Baldwin's 1956 novel, his second, was daring for its time, depicting a young man deep into Paris's second expatriate movement following World War II as he grapples with his sexual identity. He is drawn both to his fiance and to a male Italian bartender with whom he begins an affair.