A fine showcase of emerging and small-press authors.
The latest edition of the yearly anthology series offers a vivid cross section of contemporary gay life.
Though its title is something of a misnomer—The Best Gay Small Press Stories might be more fitting—this collection, edited by Berman, doesn’t suffer for its conspicuous absence of today’s most famous gay writers. Its 20 stories (most of them fiction, with a few autobiographical pieces included) examine multiple generations of gay experience. Ameen’s “Irrespective of the Storm,” for instance, chronicles his arrival in New York City in 1978, nodding to a subterranean sexual culture almost unrecognizable today, while several of the stories grapple with the meaning of commitment in the modern age of Internet sex. Though the complexity of desire might not be the most surprising thematic throughline for an anthology of gay writing, the collection succeeds precisely due to the fact that the stories are complicated, populated with believable, imperfect characters and plenty of ethical gray areas. If desire is one of the collection’s primary concerns, another dominating interest is capturing varied moments in gay men’s lives. Jones’ searing “Boy, A History” follows a character known only as Boy throughout his sexual awakening in a hostile environment. Other contributors tell stories of young love and long-term relationships turned tepid, middle-aged anxiety and elderly isolation. Though the book’s no less enjoyable for it, the anthology’s scope can feel narrow at times, with the majority of its stories taking place in familiar urban gay settings and most of its characters of an educated, well-cultured set. But the book does succeed in representing a wide range of voices—though there’s nothing approaching experimental here—and the result is a compellingly diverse reading experience: strong writing throughout, with each story distinct from the next. While this collection’s nuanced depictions of gay men today will surely attract gay readers, the quality of its stories transcends niche interest.
A fine showcase of emerging and small-press authors.Pub Date: June 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1590211526
Page Count: 267
Publisher: Lethe Press
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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