A compassionate, engrossing novel of life in the early plague years, depicted here with authentic detail and a true heart.
The panicked, formative years of the AIDS epidemic create the dramatic backdrop for this sentimental yet searingly authentic novel.
Treat’s resonant debut novel is set in 1983 during an era that saw the birth of cellphones and the Internet. Yet it was also a time of mounting distress over a mysterious, contagious, deadly “gay cancer,” especially for gay men like 30-something Jeff, the novel’s protagonist. Having abandoned his life in New York City—where “friends of friends were getting sick, and it felt like the noose was tightening”—he relocated to Seattle to teach history at the University of Washington. Timid and with a past history of excessive drinking, Jeff struggles to make quality interpersonal connections amid awkward trips to the health clinic and episodes involving phone sex, invitation-only warehouse clubs, one-night stands, and bathhouses. However, it is the attention of sexy 20-year-old Henry, “a boy on the cusp of manhood,” that he desires most. Jeff becomes sensitive to Henry’s penchant for unprotected sex and, worse, casual intravenous heroin use. Meanwhile, Nan, a kindhearted divorcée and mother to Henry’s roommate, Mike, has opened the doors to her generous home, the Yellow House, to provide a sober community center and an emotional and physical harbor for gay men in need. The House provides Jeff and Henry with a place to live and attend recovery meetings while also offering some life direction as the pull of abuse proves formidable, particularly for one of them. Treat, a former Yale professor, writes well, and his novel benefits from an easily digestible plot and a smooth sense of pacing. The conclusion may seem overwhelmingly somber to some readers, yet it’s fitting for the troubled era. Treat’s novel is a fine addition to AIDS literature, wonderfully achieving the frantic atmosphere of the mid-1980s, the rainy rawness of the Pacific Northwest, and the sensuality and unique connections within the gay community.
A compassionate, engrossing novel of life in the early plague years, depicted here with authentic detail and a true heart.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9965405-7-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Big Table Publishing Company
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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