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PENNSYLVANIA STATION

A frank yet subtle novel about the old and the new and about the steps that led to the gay rights movement.

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A successful but lonely architect in early-1960s New York City begins a relationship with a much younger man during the early days of the gay rights movement in Horrigan’s (Portraits at an Exhibition, 2015, etc.) novel.

In 1962, Frederick Bailey lives in Manhattan, where he has a well-established career as an architect. At 48, he’s set in his ways and doesn’t believe in causes. His friend Deborah, however, has tried to get Frederick to protest the planned demolition of Penn Station with a preservationist group. But he notes that the station is a “sooty, baggy, ill-kept monster of a building, a confusing mixture of styles—faux classicism, Crystal Palace ostentation.” One night, Frederick helps a woman who’s been mugged, attracting the attention of Curt, a scrappy 20-year-old who makes romantic overtures toward him. Frederick, who’s closeted to family and most friends, agrees to a later rendezvous with Curt, who then stands him up. Months later, Frederick spots Curt at a museum and the two agree to meet again, thus beginning a long, somewhat-tumultuous relationship in which Frederick fears exposure and Curt recoils from monogamy. As Curt becomes involved with the Mattachine Society gay rights group, Frederick deals with personal issues, including his mother’s early signs of dementia. The couple embark on a European trip in 1964, and Curt’s fling with an Italian leads to a confrontation. Horrigan’s novel is convincingly at home in its time period, full of wonderful details and forthright opinions about architecture and art, family dynamics, and the fight over civil rights. The author keenly describes Frederick’s fears and his struggles to adhere to a false narrative regarding Curt as well as the punitive realities that gays experienced at the time. Although the reasons that Frederick is so tied to Curt could have been further explored, the author’s attempt to get into the psyche of a pre-Stonewall gay man is admirable. A touching scene with Frederick and his mother is also one of the novel’s highlights.

A frank yet subtle novel about the old and the new and about the steps that led to the gay rights movement.

Pub Date: April 12, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-59021-636-1

Page Count: 216

Publisher: Lethe Press

Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018

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SUMMER ISLAND

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.

Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.

Pub Date: March 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-609-60737-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001

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LAST ORDERS

Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.

Pub Date: April 5, 1996

ISBN: 0-679-41224-7

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996

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