Biographer of poet Frank O'Hara, novelist Gooch (Scary Kisses, 1988) here tells us everything we ever wanted to know about the dark and decadent gay subculture in Manhattan before AIDS altered the landscape: A well-written and intelligent novel that's of more than sociological or historical interest. At the center of this voyeuristically compelling narrative is a relationship similar to that between hustler aesthete Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith. In Gooch's fictional version, Sean Devlin, a small-town boy from Pennsylvania, drops out of Columbia to become a filmmaker. Admittedly ``self-involved, vague, and indifferent,'' Sean makes up quickly for his chaste adolescence by plunging into New York's gay scene of bathhouses, bars, and porn theaters. In the Village, he encounters the ``outlaw'' Annie Boyle while she's publicly preaching the virtues of masturbation, in her own unique version of performance art. Soon, like Mapplethorpe and Smith, they're rooming together at the Chelsea Hotel, masturbating together, and dreaming of God (i.e., Andy Warhol). Fueled with all sorts of drugs, Sean becomes ``a voyeur of his low life'' and enjoys a number of increasingly kinky scenarios at the baths, where he's tied up, spanked, etc. His first artsy feature, the quasi- pornographic Sean Has His Nipple Pierced, draws the attention and patronage of the sophisticated collector Edgar Savage, who introduces Sean to the haute homosexual world of the Upper East Side. In the legendary bars of the West Village and on the old piers, Sean indulges his taste for rough and rougher trade. As both Annie and Sean become semi-famous, he explores the darkest realms of gay sex, the netherworld of ``penetration and death.'' Sean the observer soon becomes the observed as he films himself being gang- raped, but goes too far when an anonymous master/slave scene threatens his life. Chastened, he discovers true love—too late. A solid, unblinking, unsentimental look at a vanished era.
Pub Date: June 10, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-44708-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1996
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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