Farrell Covington And The Limits Of Style by Paul Rudnick

Nate Reminger is drifting through his first few weeks at Yale, confused by the whole setup of college. He’s from a middle class Jewish family, and 1970s Yale, with its trappings of privilege and confidence, is a daunting place for a shy, closeted gay eighteen year old from New Jersey. There’s a tenuous connection with a theater group on campus, but freshman year for Nate is not shaping up in a coherent fashion.

Salvation comes from ultra-rich, ultra-gorgeous Farrell Covington. Farrell is a golden boy, the youngest son of a billionaire dynasty, and he pretty much flings himself at Nate. Nate is certainly flattered, but is incredulous as to the attraction. It could be that he, with his middle class ordinariness, is exotic to Farrell. Maybe Farrell, besides being addicted to the finer sides of wealth, sees Nate as an escape from his highly insular, conservative family, who would prefer to ignore Farrell’s sexuality. But apparently, their relationship is too visible to Farrell’s father; he quickly separates the two, and it’s assumed they’ll never see each other again.

Au contraire! We aren’t even through a third of the book yet…

It appears that Harwell Covington’s steely control is enough to enforce distance between the two, but no one is taking into account Nate and Farrell’s coterie of friends, certain of which are happy to finagle things to get the two reunited. Something domestic, maybe. Something to convince Mr. Covington and his cronies that Farrell is ready to toe the line and become a cog in the family business.

Sometimes fate is kind and removes the worst roadblocks, and our lovebirds are back together, but even though Farrell still maintains an immense wealth, there are other storms brewing that will challenge the relationship. There’s a sojourn to the Hollywood machine, where Nate’s playwriting skills are put to the test when a work of his is considered for the big screen. The specter of AIDS during the eighties, which takes away so many of their friends, also effects Farrell.

However, with wealth and influence, this means you get the right doctors and the best meds, and Farrell prevails, slowed down some by the disease, but he is bigger than life, and we find that not much of anything stops him. He indulges his passion for acquiring and restoring magnificent residences, and also donates a ton of his personal fortune.

But books end, and there has to be some kind of ending to our characters of Nate and Farrell. Needless to say, I won’t be telling you everything. Read Farrell Covington and the Limits of Style and find out for yourself.

(William Hicks, Information Services)

Paul Takes The Form Of A Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor

Paul Polydoris is in his early twenties and spends his young life reading, attending college sporadically, casually working, and practicing the arts of seduction. And Paul is in a unique position to be a sexual hedonist. He can change his gender and appearance at will, morphing from male to female and back in minutes. His very being redefines gender fluidity.

Paul gleefully plays the bar scene of his college town in Iowa, making the most of the LGTQ community there. His conquests are numerous, with all types on the gender spectrum, and a little scary, considering that it’s the 1990s, and AIDS is still a reality. Paul is somewhat careful, but blasé as well, figuring that with his superhuman powers, he is somewhat impervious to the plague, as he refers to AIDS.

Paul’s journeys take him from Iowa, to a lesbian music festival in Michigan with his best friend Joan, to finding an unlikely love in Provincetown on the off season, to “settling down” in San Francisco. Life there is still a barrage of trysts, but Paul finds a slight sense of slowing down, of maturity, maybe? Paul might just be catching a breath, or, finding someone who is a bigger mystery than him.

Paul Takes The Form Of A Mortal Girl is a quick-moving bawdy romp through the crush of music exploding at the time, exploring the fast life of a person who, by their quirks or abilities, can adapt themselves into any kind of hookup. Paul is certainly a charmer in whatever form he takes, but he, despite being intelligent and well-read, is fairly superficial, a dilettante of so many things, but not a person to consider what he does – much.

Still, the book is an entertaining read, with a fair amount of sexual content, so take that into account.

(William Hicks, Information Services)

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston

August Landry is looking for a change. She is taking a big leap by moving from New Orleans to New York to finish her degree, with five cardboard boxes and a past she’d rather leave behind. Surprising new friends, a job at possibly the strangest diner in the city, and a chance encounter on the subway change not only how she sees the world, but how she sees herself in it.

This is a rare, insightful romantic comedy that on paper seems like it’s trying to do too much. Mysterious time hopping amnesiacs, psychics, and missing persons sit alongside a historical narrative of the queer revolution of the 1970s. Drag shows, pancake fundraisers, and subway cars are featured locations. However, McQuiston handles all of these elements like a master conductor, perfectly capturing the chaos and joy of being young and queer in the city while honoring the struggles of the past.

Readers who enjoyed McQuiston’s debut novel, Red, White & Royal Blue will be pleased by this excellent follow up, One Last Stop.

(Blaine Henderson, Information Services)

Boys of Alabama by Genevieve Hudson

Sixteen year old Max arrives in the small town of Delilah, Alabama, completely off-guard.  His family is German, and the local good ol’ boy culture mystifies his parents.  Max, despite language issues, manages to fit in better than most newcomers.  As Max is a natural runner, the local high school’s football coach quickly snaps him up for training.

Max’s friends on the team tease him for his German accent and naiveté with the local cuisine of fried foods, but genuinely seem to accept him in a roughhouse sort of way.  The high school that he attends is a private Christian academy, and as Max’s parents are largely atheist, the situation proves to be a learning curve for them, especially his mother.

She also questions the motives behind a local preacher who is a benefactor to the school and is active in state politics.  The Judge, as he is known, is a charismatic man who exerts a strange hold on Max,

As he gets used to football practice and the culture of his teammates, Max also juggles two secrets – that he’s gay, and he can revive dead things – and he’s about to fall for one of school’s biggest outsiders.

Pan lives with his mother in a trailer, and is easily one of the more unusual high school kids.  Labeled by the locals as a freak and witch, Pan somehow fits in with the jocks and regulars, even though his approach to personal attire and demeanor is far removed from small town norms.  And Max is drawn to Pan, even as he experiences the initiations of high school boyhood and feels a strong pull into the Judge’s brand of evangelical zeal.

Boys of Alabama is a smart, twisted tale of youth, our hero confused with growing up too quickly in a high school year where hormones rage and secrets that don’t conform to “normal” are pushed out of sight.

I started this book expecting an overblown young adult tale of supernatural pretense and was pleasantly surprised to find the magical elements of it downplayed.  Max’s uncanny ability certainly spices up the story line, but Boys of Alabama really addresses the toxic masculinity of teenage boyhood and the constant dance of fitting in even when you don’t.

I wanted a little more from the ending – it’s a shocker, but there’s too much unresolved.  For the most part, though, the book delivers, and I enjoyed the author’s style.

(William Hicks, Information Services)

 

 

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a fictionalized account of a Vietnamese-American life, as told by a grown-up son in a series of letters to his mother.

Little Dog is the son of Rose, a daughter born during the Vietnam War of a Vietnamese mother and an American soldier.  He and his family immigrate to Hartford, Connecticut when Little Dog is about two.  As his mother doesn’t really speak English, he learns it as a second language when he begins school.

Little Dog’s home life is erratic.  His mother, who supports the family by nail salon work and occasional factory stints, varies from supportive to physically abusive.  His grandmother Lan, who comes to live with them, is schizophrenic, but in her coherent times is a loving person who adds a creative edge to their life.

At school, other kids bully Little Dog; his teachers don’t get him.  It’s into his teens that he gets acceptance of a sort, when he works summers on a nearby tobacco farm.  Amid some good-natured jostling, the other workers generally get along with him.

Along with the job comes his first love when he meets Trevor, the slightly older grandson of the farm’s owner.  Trevor’s alcoholic father is also abusive to him; the two have complicated home lives in common.  There’s a rough tenderness to Trevor.  He is quick with drug abuse and bravado, but has a vulnerability to him.

Early on in the book, I was prepared to perceive the mother as some horrible person – and she wasn’t.  There are some graphic descriptions of physical abuse early into the book, but the author doesn’t dwell on it; rather, there is more of an empathy for the mother, considering the trauma that she and her mother lived through in Vietnam.

Lan, the grandmother, is a stabilizing person in the household; she acts as a buffer between Little Dog and his mother.  Even though Lan suffers from mental illness, she is able to see the briefest glimmerings of beauty in their world of poverty.

A much older version of the American soldier who is Little Dog’s grandfather, or who accepts responsibility for being the grandfather, appears in short passages throughout the book.  Vuong also renders him a caring figure, one who is quick to acknowledge Little Dog as his grandson.

This book is a coming-of-age account, but I wouldn’t call it typical.   The writing is beautiful and dreamlike, and there are places where flashbacks appear fairly quickly.  Vuong made his mark earlier as a poet, and the descriptive passages in the book certainly show this.  In fact, there’s a whole brief chapter which is a poem in itself.

(William Hicks, Information Services)

 

Every True Pleasure : LGBTQ Tales of North Carolina edited by Wilton Barnhardt

High school crushes.  Transitioning husbands.  Bitter homecomings – these are but a few of the topics covered in Every True Pleasure, an anthology of short stories and essays written by LGBTQ authors either from North Carolina or associated with the state.  Writers vary from well known (David Sedaris, Allan Gurganus) to up-in-coming.

Here are a few examples of the contents – In Michael Parker’s “Pete and Daniel”, two brothers drink together as one of them plies the other for details on a potentially incriminating encounter.  In Jasmine Beach-Ferrara’s “Love The Soldier”, a policewoman has to contend with a future deployment to the Middle East as she navigates her sexuality and mourns her older brother.  In Belle Boggs’ “Jonas”, the main character uses therapy to negotiate her feelings between a transitioning husband and a religious daughter who will barely talk to her.  And in Penelope Robbins’ “Girlfriend”, a young wife chafes against her domestic life as she remembers a young love from high school and then meets her friend, decimated by disease, years later in Europe.

Our protagonists run the spectrum of the LGBTQ experience.  They are straight-laced school superintendents, supporting wives, occasionally victims of abuse.  They represent different ethnicities, different social statuses.  One story here (“Rabbit Heart”) even delves into speculative fiction.

Consider Every True Pleasure for your reading list in this last week of Pride Month.

(William Hicks, Information Services)

 

The Sparsholt Affair by Alan Hollinghurst

The Sparsholt Affair chronicles a clutch of friends and their associations with a father, and more specifically his son, through 1940 college camaraderie, future scandal, the free-wheeling 1970s, and recent times.

David Sparsholt is the namesake of the title, a gorgeous young man whose brief presence at Oxford University sparks the interests of two other students – Peter Coyle, an artist who wants to sketch David, and Evert Dax, the son of a then-renowned writer. Coyle is less inhibited and more flippant in his desire for David;  Evert is clearly infatuated with him.  It’s Freddie Green, the clear-eyed older friend of them all, who takes in their transgressions.

Flash forward to the mid-1960s, when David and his family are vacationing in Cornwall.  His teenage son Johnny is the main character in this section – he struggles with adolescent angst,  his own sexuality, and a painful crush on a French exchange student who doesn’t reciprocate.

Johnny is next in his early twenties and slowly understanding his own desirability.  As an apprentice art restorer, he meets with and befriends some of his father’s old college cohorts, including Evert and  Freddie.  It’s with a much younger lover of Evert’s that he learns the hard lessons of lust and disinterest.

Age and time catch up with them all.  There are quiet moments where Johnny and his father connect as best as they can.  David is a product of his generation – a war hero and successful businessman who doesn’t quite understand his son and how he is.  But, considering the subject of the scandal that underpins the novel, it’s possible that David understands all too well.

Although most of its characters are gay, The Sparsholt Affair is a long study of momentary emotions that could easily apply to anyone who has felt uncertainty, rejection, or the pall of the past.  I wouldn’t call the book plot-driven, although things do unravel on their own time.  Reading the book is an endeavor that requires quiet.

With that as a disclaimer, Hollinghurst writes beautifully and with occasional biting bit.  The book is very British in tone, and it helps to know the social changes that happened there during the timeline of the book.

(William Hicks, Information Services)

 

A Place Called Winter by Patrick Gale

This book took awhile to catch on for me.  I started it at least three or four times, and the beginning didn’t grab me.  Just needed to get through the first twenty pages – and I’m now glad that I read the book.

Harry Cane is a privileged and shy Englishman who marries well, has a child – and then is forced to leave his life of leisure for the prairies of Saskatchewan after having an illicit affair with a man.

On Harry’s ship journey to Canada, he encounters a number of privileged dandies who approach their homesteading futures as a lark in the country.  He also meets the notorious Troels Munck, a deal maker and lecherous soul whose destiny becomes bound up with Harry’s.

Harry, green as he is to farm work, approaches it wisely with foresight.  He spends a year laboring on the farm of Munck’s brother-in-law, and then gets his own quarter section through some under-the-table conniving from Munck.

Through the back-breaking work of making his own home, Harry finds a type of redemption not found in the upper class circles of his previous life.  To be sure, he misses his family sorely.  But the wide open spaces of western Canada and their rhythms of life become his life, far more deeply than his previous experiences.  Harry also finds love of a sort, but the threat of war beyond his small community soon tears at anything he holds dear.

The storyline is not entirely linear, and I think this was a stumbling block for me.  The book begins with Harry in some kind of wretched asylum – apparently he has either committed some type of crime or experienced a horrific act.  He is then transferred into a gentler, albeit experimental facility.

As you keep reading, the institutional chapters, presented almost as flashbacks, are instead more present-day to the time of the book’s ending.

A Place Called Winter is a historical novel that covers many things – the social mores of Edwardian England, homesteading in Canada, World War I, racism, gay and lesbian/gender issues, etc.  I wound up enjoying it very much, and got very emotionally involved with the characters.

As I mentioned, the book began slowly, but keep with it; A Place Called Winter proved to be a rewarding read.  This situation reminds me of another book from twenty years ago that also started out slowly but turned out to be one of my favorite books – Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier.

(William Hicks, Information Services)