A fine showcase of emerging and small-press authors.
The latest edition of the yearly anthology series offers a vivid cross section of contemporary gay life.
Though its title is something of a misnomer—The Best Gay Small Press Stories might be more fitting—this collection, edited by Berman, doesn’t suffer for its conspicuous absence of today’s most famous gay writers. Its 20 stories (most of them fiction, with a few autobiographical pieces included) examine multiple generations of gay experience. Ameen’s “Irrespective of the Storm,” for instance, chronicles his arrival in New York City in 1978, nodding to a subterranean sexual culture almost unrecognizable today, while several of the stories grapple with the meaning of commitment in the modern age of Internet sex. Though the complexity of desire might not be the most surprising thematic throughline for an anthology of gay writing, the collection succeeds precisely due to the fact that the stories are complicated, populated with believable, imperfect characters and plenty of ethical gray areas. If desire is one of the collection’s primary concerns, another dominating interest is capturing varied moments in gay men’s lives. Jones’ searing “Boy, A History” follows a character known only as Boy throughout his sexual awakening in a hostile environment. Other contributors tell stories of young love and long-term relationships turned tepid, middle-aged anxiety and elderly isolation. Though the book’s no less enjoyable for it, the anthology’s scope can feel narrow at times, with the majority of its stories taking place in familiar urban gay settings and most of its characters of an educated, well-cultured set. But the book does succeed in representing a wide range of voices—though there’s nothing approaching experimental here—and the result is a compellingly diverse reading experience: strong writing throughout, with each story distinct from the next. While this collection’s nuanced depictions of gay men today will surely attract gay readers, the quality of its stories transcends niche interest.
A fine showcase of emerging and small-press authors.Pub Date: June 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1590211526
Page Count: 267
Publisher: Lethe Press
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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
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