Review by Booklist Review
The deep secret of Florida [is] depression," asserts the unnamed narrator of this new novel by Holleran, known for his classic gay novel Dancer from the Dance. Set in north Florida, this is the story of the quotidian life of a sixty-something gay man, whose days and evenings seem to consist of two things: taking walks around his small town and visiting an older gay friend, Earl, to watch old movies. Introducing incident to a novel with little plot, the eightysomething Earl hires a vaguely sinister handyman, who gradually takes over his life. Holleran is terrific at description; because the handyman has an average upper body and an enormous butt, he is described as looking "like a bowling pin"; the men who cruise a local pornographic video store are "glum," "silent," and "egg-shaped"; old age is like a pipe, "dry, and corroded." Indeed, old age is a leitmotif--that and the nameless dread that is infesting the narrator's life. Don't think for a minute that any of this is dull; thanks to Holleran's brilliant gift for characterization, the narrator and Earl come alive on the page, commanding readers' attention to what is a splendid, remarkably good book.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The geographical and emotional landscape of contemporary rural Florida is at the core of this majestic and wistful rumination on ageing, loneliness, and mortality from Holleran (Dancer from the Dance). The 60-something unnamed narrator strives to hold onto a long, lingering friendship with Earl, who's 20 years older, and reflects with bittersweetness on losses, past loves, and the indulgences of desire and lust. (His melancholy excursions include cruising a video arcade and a boat ramp in nearby Gainesville, places he's visited for the past couple of decades.) Earl is a retired accountant and widower, and their common interests--books, music, "fine furniture," picking blueberries--have bound them through the years as they remember friends of theirs who have died from AIDS and the narrator cared for his ailing parents. He thinks of their friendship as a "bucolic dream," the "perfect combination of solitude and companionship." The specter of death feels to the narrator "like a game of musical chairs... when the music stops you have to sit down wherever you are." Though the novel is permeated by a mournful depression, Holleran brings stylistic flourishes and mordant nostalgia to the proceedings, and fully develops the narrator, who floats elegantly on his distilled memories and eventually lands on a beautiful resolution. This vital work shows Holleran at the top of his game. (June)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Gay men are the life of the party, we're told, but what happens when it's time to die? The unnamed narrator of this mordant, unflinching novel is mired in what he calls a "predicament" quite different from that experienced by the hip young gay men at the heart of Holleran's most admired novel, Dancer From the Dance (1978), that crucial narrative set in 1970s Manhattan. This novel is about gay men dying alone in a small, conservative, Christian town in North Florida. "Halloween, alas, was the only time there was anything even slightly campy about our town," the narrator complains. In his 60s, he's friends, or at least experiences a "shared loneliness," with Earl, another gay man, who's 20 years older; Earl's illnesses provide a grim education in being old and, worse, getting even older. Earl and the narrator talk about the "UPS deliveryman, or a sale on ice cream at the grocery store, or a new person who'd moved into the rental cottages down the street." And yet Holleran makes these everyday topics, and the seemingly uneventful days of the narrator and his friends, into thrilling fiction. That is partly because this novel feels confessional, with the narrator divulging thoughts and behavior that most of us would be afraid to share. Holleran is fiercely a pointillist. His observations about the minute details of his narrator's life feel revelatory--and not always specific to the lives of gay men. "Love and kindness have a lineage their recipients know nothing about," the narrator declares, including the sometimes unrequited kindness of helping someone else die. Ostensibly about gay men getting older and being alone, this novel is really about everyone getting older and being alone. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
