A compassionate, engrossing novel of life in the early plague years, depicted here with authentic detail and a true heart.
The panicked, formative years of the AIDS epidemic create the dramatic backdrop for this sentimental yet searingly authentic novel.
Treat’s resonant debut novel is set in 1983 during an era that saw the birth of cellphones and the Internet. Yet it was also a time of mounting distress over a mysterious, contagious, deadly “gay cancer,” especially for gay men like 30-something Jeff, the novel’s protagonist. Having abandoned his life in New York City—where “friends of friends were getting sick, and it felt like the noose was tightening”—he relocated to Seattle to teach history at the University of Washington. Timid and with a past history of excessive drinking, Jeff struggles to make quality interpersonal connections amid awkward trips to the health clinic and episodes involving phone sex, invitation-only warehouse clubs, one-night stands, and bathhouses. However, it is the attention of sexy 20-year-old Henry, “a boy on the cusp of manhood,” that he desires most. Jeff becomes sensitive to Henry’s penchant for unprotected sex and, worse, casual intravenous heroin use. Meanwhile, Nan, a kindhearted divorcée and mother to Henry’s roommate, Mike, has opened the doors to her generous home, the Yellow House, to provide a sober community center and an emotional and physical harbor for gay men in need. The House provides Jeff and Henry with a place to live and attend recovery meetings while also offering some life direction as the pull of abuse proves formidable, particularly for one of them. Treat, a former Yale professor, writes well, and his novel benefits from an easily digestible plot and a smooth sense of pacing. The conclusion may seem overwhelmingly somber to some readers, yet it’s fitting for the troubled era. Treat’s novel is a fine addition to AIDS literature, wonderfully achieving the frantic atmosphere of the mid-1980s, the rainy rawness of the Pacific Northwest, and the sensuality and unique connections within the gay community.
A compassionate, engrossing novel of life in the early plague years, depicted here with authentic detail and a true heart.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9965405-7-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Big Table Publishing Company
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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