An imperfect but revealing novel of gay life in the 1940s and ’50s.
A gay man comes of age in midcentury Chicago in Hanssen-Adams’ novel.
It’s 1946, and 14-year-old Nick Hansen is waiting for the train downtown. His planned purchases that day include an issue of Men’s Health, featuring pictures of male bodybuilders—an indication of his nascent attraction to men. During his wait, he accepts a lift from a 30-ish man named Stan, who takes him to the woods and makes sexual advances. Stan soon begins picking up Nick from school, threatening the teen with blackmail, and eventually raping him. When Nick seeks help from his teachers, they bizarrely blame him for bringing the incident on himself. “I had no friends that I could turn to about something like this…I sat there thinking about what Stan had just said and about what he had done to me….Was I queer, which was the word that he had used?” In high school, Nick meets a few like-minded boys and has sex with a Marine named Doug, but his experience with Stan continues to haunt him as he navigates his sexual identity and the murky world of hookup culture. Eventually, he graduates from high school, finds a job, and even becomes a curious man’s first male sexual partner. Unfortunately for Nick, that man, Allan Miller, is murdered shortly afterward, leading police to suspect that Nick is involved in the killing. Suddenly, the life that Nick has been at pains to keep secret is in danger of being revealed, and he could possibly end up in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
Hanssen-Adams makes it clear that this is a work of fiction, but it’s one that he says is partially inspired by events from his own life. The book’s shape and tone are highly memoiristic, laying out the happenings in Nick’s life in a chronological and episodic manner. A great deal of information is simply reported rather than dramatized in scenes, and the prose has the vague, reflective quality of a diary entry: “We spent a good part of that first day on the beach, which we had pretty much to ourselves. And I have to say that this was the best beach that I had ever seen. It seemed to go on forever, the sand was very fine and there were no rocks or anything else that you had to avoid stepping on.” The book’s greatest strength is in how it depicts aspects of gay life at a time when gay sex was treated as a criminal act and when others’ discovery of one’s sexual orientation could completely undo a person’s life. The interactions between different men—some of whom know what they want and some of whom do not—are a source of great dramatic tension that’s sometimes uplifting, sometimes disturbing, and other times a combination of both. Those looking for a full, novelistic treatment will be disappointed, but readers who are content to enjoy a slice of life from an earlier era will find much of value here.
An imperfect but revealing novel of gay life in the 1940s and ’50s.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 273
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Oct. 29, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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