A BOY I ONCE KNEW

High-school English teacher Stone chronicles a journey of discovery that began when she received a case of diaries bequeathed to her by a former student who died of AIDS.

Vincent was in one of Stone’s very first classes, and they exchanged Christmas cards for more than 20 years, but they were never particularly close. She doesn’t remember that much about him, other than his response as a 15-year-old to “The Gift of the Magi” and a single visit when he was 16. When his box of journals appears on Stone's doorstep, it takes her a moment even to understand that she's looking at a record of Vincent's final years. Puzzled but moved, Stone then spends three years becoming ever more absorbed by the artifacts, filled with ephemera from the life of a gay man enjoying San Francisco and traveling around the world. Her mood is one of grim anticipation; though his entries start out jauntily enough, he is soon engulfed by the horror of the mysterious plague that races through his community. Vincent discovers his first Kaposi's Sarcoma lesions, pays hospital visits to friends who will never recover, and makes squares for the AIDS quilt in memory of those who have been claimed by the disease. Reading about his inexorable decline, Stone finds parallels in her own life, including her inability to connect with the memory of loved ones who have died and the crisis provoked by her mother's mental deterioration. Vincent becomes more and more intensely real to her, and as she sees him handle the pain of watching his friends cut down one after another, Stone garners insight into how to treat her mother with dignity while making the best possible arrangements for medical care.

Somewhat slight but never saccharine, a graceful homage to an ordinary man.