A smart, heartfelt set of tales of gay men’s lives.
Currier (Until My Heart Stops, 2015, etc.) offers a collection of short stories about heartbreaks and humorous mistakes.
In “Lancelot’s Secret,” a college student takes an internship with a traveling production of Camelot, forcing him to contend with secret feelings of same-sex attraction. A man accompanies a friend who’s husband-hunting in the Hamptons and ends up meeting some men himself in “Sometimes You Have to Settle for Popeye (Even Though You’d Rather Play with Bluto).” “Elvis at Three is an Angel to Me” tells the tale of a man who suffers a complicated, unrequited crush on his roommate, who may be HIV-positive. In these 12 stories, Currier probes the possibilities and pitfalls of gay relationships, from adolescent first loves to middle-age what-might-have-beens. In the title story, a 63-year-old man, clicking through old boyfriends’ social media profiles, receives a shocking revelation about a fling he had 35 years ago: “You were never supposed to reach sixty,” the story begins, referring to the protagonist. “You survived a premature birth, the AIDS decades, the Y2K bug, 9/11, four hurricanes, three broken ribs, and two heart attacks. You don’t know whether to feel grateful or cursed.” The stories tend to focus on similar characters—often, expatriate Southerners looking for love in New York City and its environs. Currier varies the points of view, however, and even experiments with structure, as in “How to Obtain an Alfred Hitchcock Physique (and Bonus Dark Psyche),” which he formats as a numbered how-to list. His prose is plainspoken and often funny, although it also contains moments of understated emotion, as when a man describes his work with AIDS patients: “I used to be a ‘buddy’ to a guy who lived on the Upper East Side, which meant riding the subway for hours to take him to doctor appointments and buy his groceries. He was the third buddy in a row that I lost so I am taking a break until I am ready to have another buddy.” Cumulatively, the stories offer a warm, slightly melancholic view of people in and out of love.
A smart, heartfelt set of tales of gay men’s lives.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-937627-36-2
Page Count: 182
Publisher: Chelsea Station Editions
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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