Strong writing chops sculpt an odyssey from an addict’s raw life.
This debut novel follows a group of HIV-positive gay men in the Los Angeles area.
Middle-aged Bert Sykes has HIV. He’s also a dealer and user of methamphetamine, which makes him hellbent on having sex and cleaning house. His friend Korn (also gay and an addict) owns a house in a Jewish neighborhood, where he is entirely unwelcome. Meanwhile, in North Hollywood, Mike Gallagher has graduated from the Cri-Life Recovery House (a place that’s “not just gay friendly, but gay sensitive”). His friend Rogarth was kicked out of Cri-Life by the sanctimonious Rick, a “fag with AIDS who quotes Ayn Rand.” The men’s travels and travails unfold through philosophical rants—like the similarity between ordering a burrito and being at the doctor—and flashbacks involving people like Becky Stein, an infamous “Kaiser Soze” among gay drug dealers. Further details about Cri-Life emerge as well, including the resident hoods, whose hard exteriors crack when they dance the Hokey-Pokey, and the meal called Spread, made with ramen noodles, Tabasco sauce, and mayonnaise that’s mixed in a giant trash bag. Thanks to the prevalence of HIV medications, those afflicted now have better prognoses, though whether salvation or damnation lies ahead for Bert and the others must still be decided. In this hilarious, if dark, debut, author Weaver places readers directly into the minds of meth-heads who are “constructing their own constantly changing contexts” to “fit new and different versions of themselves.” Skirting a traditional plot, Weaver’s adventures flow and burble like liquor taps, and ideas spill every which way, similar to the work of William Burroughs. His portraits continually entertain, like when he tells us that a bear (a burly, hairy gay man) is “the kind of guy who’s found a way to capitalize on his aversion to exercise along with his considerable appetite for pasta, cheese and peach cobbler.” Weaver’s marriage of the high and the low—the classical music digressions and the dirty sex fantasies—will broaden most readers’ horizons.
Strong writing chops sculpt an odyssey from an addict’s raw life.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-61296-808-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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