A sincere journey of transformation that successfully balances politics and storytelling with heartwarming results.
In Smith’s novel, a young man finds that it’s time to grow up and change his reckless behavior after he loses his dear friend to AIDS.
David Mathews has come into a good-sized inheritance, including a Manhattan loft and a beach house in the Hamptons. But this sudden wealth doesn’t stop him from hustling—the sexual currency he’s grown accustomed to in New York. It was hustling that introduced him to the man who left him a fortune: Robert, a charming man who profiled David in his magazine and took him under his wing. One of David’s habits is imagining the characters in his memories as famous people, from Matt Dillon to Didi Conn; he does this instead of facing his real recollections, ever since he ran away from Arkansas as a teenager. David still grieves for Robert, who died of AIDS, but despite his proximity to the devastating disease, he still has unprotected sex. Indeed, it becomes David’s thrill and secret—one he continues to keep even after Robert appears to him as a ghost, acting as a chatty sidekick while David navigates the ups and downs of his life. When David’s estranged family calls him home to see his dying mother, Robert’s ghost comes along, for better or worse. Once there, David meets Chris, an artist who has stricter boundaries regarding safe sex. Before David’s mother dies, he learns a secret that brings his real memories back to him, and casts his sexual behavior in a different light. It will take the kindness of a transgender nurse, and Chris’ convictions as a gay man and an artist, for David to become the man that Robert always knew he was. The political landscape of the novel is commendably and easily woven into the characters’ interactions, while never overpowering the plot. Mentorship and love are beautifully illustrated in David’s relationships with both Robert and Chris. The appearance of Robert’s ghost allows readers to understand the complexities of David’s grief. The story is a bit slow to start, and each chapter is distractingly and confusingly accompanied by a dated list, which doesn’t match the chapter’s time frame. Also, although the characters are well-drawn, they aren’t a huge departure from LGBT characters readers may have met before. Overall, however, this is an ambitious novel that delivers redemption with humor and heart.
A sincere journey of transformation that successfully balances politics and storytelling with heartwarming results.Pub Date: May 21, 2014
ISBN: 978-0996023320
Page Count: 294
Publisher: PressLess, LLC
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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