Source of book: Audiobook from the library
This book is one that NPR recommended and that sounded interesting to me. It happened to be available on audiobook during a time when I am doing a good bit of commuting for music gigs.
Let me say at the outset that it took me a while to get into this book. However, once the stage was set and the characters and situations introduced, I found myself quite wrapped up in the story. It’s just a little bit of a slow starter.
In a way, this is two books in one. There are two narrative threads, separated by about thirty years in time. The chapters alternate between the threads, but this is not confusing at all, both because the year is given at the start of each chapter, and because the plots are significantly different. This way of writing works well in this book, and I am impressed with the author’s care to avoid revealing too many spoilers from the later plot about the earlier one.
The protagonist is Artie, a gay man who moved to New York City after coming out to his unsupportive parents in the 1980s. This is, of course, during the height of the AIDS epidemic, which decimated the gay communities in many large cities around the world. For more of my thoughts on the inhumane response to AIDS, check out my post on Angels in America.
The earlier plot is about Artie’s found family, and how he met his eventual partner, Abraham. For LGBTQ people around the world, biological family is often fraught, a place of trauma, not safety and community. Thus, “found family” often becomes the human community for them.
I can very much understand this, as my birth family is mostly not a place of safety and acceptance, and I too have had to make my own “found family” and community. While it is not the same as coming out as LGBTQ, I essentially had a coming out of my own, as a person who was not a Republican, not a Cultural Fundamentalist, and not a member of the White Christian Nationalist cult. And I was rejected for that.
Just as coming out as LGBTQ has implications for family structure, intimate relationships, and power dynamics; so does coming out as having rejected patriarchy. For my parents, my choice to have an egalitarian marriage, where both of us split breadwinning, was as unacceptable as my marrying another man would have been. Although the blame was mostly placed on my wife for our choices.
I am so grateful for the found family that has come into my life. You know who you are, and I want you to know that mean the world to me, and you are an important part of my life, and my wife and kids’ lives as well.
I don’t want to make this post about me, however. I just wanted to note that a lot of this book resonated with me for specific reasons, even though it is about LGBTQ people and communities.
Anyway, Artie finds a friend group by age 30. Artie, Kimberly and Adam form a group with a fourth (whose name eludes me and I cannot find online - his appearance is very brief) for a weekly movie night, until AIDS claims this friend. The trio continues the tradition during the course of the first plot of the book.
Eventually, the trio meets Abe at a gay bar. Abe is…complicated. He is arrogant and prickly, a high-powered lawyer. And he is both bisexual and firmly in the closet. He and Artie begin an on and off relationship, during which Abe is also sleeping with his eventual wife, Vanessa.
Artie is a frustrated writer who works as an ad copy writer to pay the bills, but hates it. When he finally does finish his novel, it fizzles. (One hilarious scene in the book is the worst book signing ever.)
Fast forward thirty years, and Adam, Kimberly, and Abe are all dead (I won’t spoil those details.) Artie, now a successful ghost writer, has become mostly a hermit, with his only social life being, oddly enough, Vanessa, and Abe’s daughter Halle, to whom Artie has essentially become a second father figure (along with Vanessa’s second husband.)
When Vanessa and Halle move across the country, Artie is left alone, and knows he needs to find his community again. He starts volunteering at the local LGBTQ senior center, before a bad fall reduces him to one of those the center is for.
But he also meets a variety of colorful characters - we straight folk tend to forget sometimes that LGBTQ people get old too, and often struggle with a lack of acceptance from their cishet peers. And, perhaps, along with community, Artie can find love again. (And get that sequel written.)
The book isn’t terribly long, so, while it does try to get into the backstories for the supporting characters, some are given just a brief sketch. The book, despite what it sounds like, with mortality, generational trauma, bigotry, aging, and loss as themes, is actually not a heavy book at all. It would make a decent beach read, in my opinion. It’s literary, but flows easily and quickly.
One review I ran across noted that many books about the AIDS era tend to be preachy or full of saviorism - in other words, books written about AIDS for straight people.
This book is not that. It is written by a gay man primarily for LGBTQ people to read and enjoy. And it shows, in a very positive way. Even as a boring middle aged white cishet guy, though, I really enjoyed it too. Because it is ultimately about believable, loveably flawed and human people.
Artie, with his introversion, risk aversion, and neurotic tendencies combined with a good heart, is likeable - loveable - as a protagonist. You can’t help rooting for him the way you would a lost soul of a friend or relative. You may facepalm from time to time, but you really want them to have a good life.
The other characters are interesting too, particularly the seniors. I have spent my career working with seniors, and indeed, I did a bit of volunteering as a kid with them as well. This book nails the experience, the joys and the frustrations, that come with age and working with the aged. Finger observes and describes humans so well.
There are no villains in this book, unless you count the real-life politicians in the Reagan Administration, and they exist only as context for the book.
The humans in the book are plenty flawed, to be sure. They do stupid, hurtful things sometimes. They irritate each other, they make bad decisions - all the usual human drama. But each character has good in them too - even the martinet-like head of the senior center, the genderqueer Ali.
One of the episodes that stood out to me particularly is Artie’s first ghostwriting assignment. In it, he does an “autobiography” of an aging television star, Sterling Bismarck, who was a closeted gay man during his fame, but who is now dying of AIDS, and wants to tell his story rather than let the tabloids do it after his death.
The interview is hilarious yet also poignant. I was particularly struck with the exchange where Sterling grills Artie about why he should be the one to write the book. Sterling picked Artie after reading his book, and wanted a queer writer. Artie, in a moment of vulnerability, explains that he feels compelled to write the book, and his reasoning is fascinating, and really resonates for me.
Artie feels a responsibility to the LGBTQ community to tell their stories. Even - especially perhaps - because the stories make the cishet establishment uncomfortable and even angry. To tell those stories even though some people do not want to hear them, do not want them told, do not want the truth known.
He compares it in his mind to the act of coming out, which faces the same resistance from those it makes uncomfortable.
This too really resonated for me. My parents are furious that I blog about our family. They do not want our family dynamics to be public. They do not want the unpleasant stories told. I was expected to show a loyalty to them (and my sister) and never ever put them in a negative light. Of course, the reciprocal courtesy was not extended, particularly when it came to my wife, who was considered a fair target for open lies and slander.
To an extent, I too feel a responsibility to tell the stories. There are millions of us children who grew up under Religious Authoritarian Parenting and the white nationalist culture wars™, and I write in significant part for them, for all of us. Our stories matter, and need to be told. I cannot just paper over the trauma, or pretend that our nation isn’t self destructing precisely because of the toxic false teachings my parents and people like them swallowed wholesale.
I’m sure I am missing some of the things I wanted to say about this book. I love how it brings New York City to life, particularly the Village of the 1980s. I love the characters, even though they can be frustrating. I love the sense of community. I love that the book is rather introvert focused - I very much understand Artie’s tendency to cocoon rather than get out there and make friends, even though he is good at it when he gets out there. (That’s not at all like me….right?) I love the humor, and the general good nature of the book. Even in terrible circumstances, humans have a desire to connect, to find community, to be friends. It is a reminder that even when the fascists are in charge, good people are still the majority, and we can find each other and build our communities.
I love the way the book approaches aging and the challenges of maintaining community when your friends keep dying - that’s a future for most of us, after all. The book keeps it real, everything feels like it could really happen. It’s realism that is occasionally gritty, but mostly just…real.
I should also mention the narrator, David Pittu, who does a great job with all the voices, making it easy to tell who is speaking.
Regardless of your age, gender, or sexuality, give this book a shot. Humanity and mortality belong to us all, and community is what we all need.
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