WHO WILL CLIFF DATE?

A Connecticut man questions his sexuality over the course of his life in Robinson’s novel.

In 1961, Cliff Ryan is 8 years old, watching JFK’s inauguration on TV in his parents’ West Hartford, Connecticut, home. “She’s so pretty,” his mother remarks as the camera captures Jackie Kennedy. “Cliff, I hope you marry a girl like that.” This interaction sets up the central question of the narrative: What kind of person (and of what gender) will Cliff settle down with? As Cliff grows up, the narrator notes that he experiences “what some people today (2025) call the heteronormative socialization process”; he’s taught to square dance with girls in his fourth grade gym class, is rejected by a pretty girl at a friend’s bar mitzvah, and is reprimanded by his gym teacher for getting an erection in the shower with other boys. As an undergraduate at the University of Connecticut, Cliff watches The Boys in the Band with his roommate, Ralph. The experience encourages Cliff to pursue his attraction to women, while Ralph turns the other way. As Cliff graduates, goes to law school, and then enters the working world, the question remains: Is a woman really what he wants? A subplot follows Cliff’s brother, Howard, who is six years Cliff’s senior, a burger restaurant employee who goes on an ill-fated date with a rich Wellesley student named Jane. He chafes against the expectation that men should pay on dates, and after a fight with Jane about the roles of women and men, he is drafted and sent to Vietnam. While the novel’s explorations of the nuances of human sexuality are intriguing, Robinson’s stilted syntax makes the book a frustrating read. The author frequently pauses the action to shoehorn in unnecessary historical context: “The DJ (disk jockey) is playing records (songs) that are on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in October 1965.” The straightforward vocabulary and explanatory tone make the book read like a middle-grade novel, but later chapters in Cliff’s life explicitly describe sex scenes in a clinical tone.

A stiff, awkward coming-of-age story.