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HOW LONG HAS THIS BEEN GOING ON?

A seasoned author of gay writing, both fiction and nonfiction (the anthology Waves, 1994; the Buddies trilogy, etc.), returns, this time with a vast and emphatically sweeping saga of queer life since 1949. Beginning in the heady Hollywood years following WW II and concluding with the AIDS-scourged 90's, Mordden chronicles the lives of 15 members of an emerging gay and lesbian postwar community. The premise—that sometime in the 1950's homosexuals began to tire of their insular communities and long for broader acceptance—is less than revelatory, but the manner in which the author plays it out is lively and often scabrously comic. The ball gets rolling when Frank Hubbard, an LA vice cop and closeted queer, abandons the force to start a moving company with his newfound lover. By 1985, he's drifted from LA to New York to San Francisco, encountering torchy cabaret acts like the scoldingly witty Kid, cerebral and entrepreneurial lesbians like nightclub manager Lois, and a gaggle of straights, hustlers, and porn stars. Frank eventually gets sick and kills himself in heroic fashion, but not before he garners a reputation as a sort of gay Achilles, never shrinking from the good fight. Interspersed with his story are several other linked tales, mostly reminiscent of the Edmund White pattern: Misunderstoods on both sides of the sexual fence flee Middle America for the ribald sanctuary of the big cities, where they boink like rabbits just off the farm and, it seems, spend almost all their spare time chatting each other up. (The novel is narrated almost entirely through dialogue.) Mordden covers his history with remarkable effectiveness—particularly gay Hollywood in the George Cukor era—and the banter is priceless. So baggy and so expansive in its generosity to its subjects that it could only be a novel; no one would have time for the movie, and there isn't a theater big enough to stage the play.

Pub Date: May 15, 1995

ISBN: 0-679-41529-7

Page Count: 608

Publisher: Villard

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.

"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

Pub Date: June 15, 1951

ISBN: 0316769177

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951

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MAGIC HOUR

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.

Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

Pub Date: March 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-345-46752-3

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005

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