THE STORY OF HAROLD

by Terry Andrews ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 4, 1974

The Story of Harold which is the name of this novel is also the title of a best-selling kook kiddie book which the author, Terry Andrews, presumably wrote about himself -- a variable sized (twelve to thirteen inches at most) mini-magician little humanoid who lives in several closets and museums of New York. His friends -- he has a catholicity of taste -- include everyone from the Rat to the Three-Legged Nothing to discarded teddy bears to people like you and me. Terry himself is polymorphous perverse: a witty opera-attending lover for the cultured Anne Black; a storyteller divine to a disturbed seven year-old; and finally the obsessed and hopeless lover of a selfish but charming surgeon who needs an S-M switching before going home to his wife and six children. Terry is given to bubbling little verses that celebrate the author's whimsical moods; he will also tell you all and probably more than you need to know about the swingers and gay scenes of the city. It is a sometimes appealing, often funny, vaguely outrageous and quasi-erotic parable about a not-so-untypical New Yorker trying to arrange the various pieces of his life--more honest in its offhand way about the unfillable lusts of the body and the spirit than many of our serious texts. But by no means as lovable as Steven Millhauser's Edwin Mullhouse.

Pub Date: April 4, 1974

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Holt, Rinehart & Winston

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974

Categories: FICTION