About the Author

Andrew Holleran is the author of a short story collection and four acclaimed novels, Dancer from the Dance, Nights in Aruba, The Beauty of Men, and Grief. He lives in Washington, D.C. and Florida.

Reviews

An understated, eloquent novel by Holleran (Dancer from the Dance) captures the pain of a generation of gay men who have survived the AIDS epidemic and reached middle age yearning for fidelity, tenderness and intimacy. The unnamed, silver-haired narrator has just relocated from Florida, where he cared for his recently deceased mother for the last 12 years, to Washington, D.C., to "start life over" and teach a college seminar on literature and AIDS. He rents a room in a townhouse near Dupont Circle, his solitude deepened by his awareness that he and his gay, celibate landlord, a "homosexual emeritus," form only a semblance of a household. The narrator spends his days exploring the streets of the capital and his nights engrossed in the letters of Mary Todd Lincoln, who held onto her grief and guilt at her husband's death much like the narrator hordes his guilt for never having come out of the closet to his mother-and for having survived the 1980s and '90s. Holleran makes his coiled reticence speak volumes on attachment, aging, sex and love in small scenes as compelling as they are heartbreaking. Visiting with his friend Frank, whose willful pragmatism throws the narrator's mourning in sharp relief, prove especially revealing. Frank manages to have a steady boyfriend, while for the narrator, his landlord and most of their friends, love and partnership seem impossibly intimate. Until its terse, piercing conclusion, Holleran's elegiac narrative possesses its power in the unsaid. (June) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Since the 1978 publication of The Dancer and the Dance, Holleran has been recognized as one of the most prominent voices in gay literature. In his latest novel, he addresses grief, both personal and historical. For years, the unnamed narrator has been caring for his mother, visiting her regularly after her confinement to a nursing home. Now she has died and seems to have taken with her his reason for living. A friend arranges a guest professorship and a room in a Washington, DC, townhouse, and the narrator tries on this new life for a few months. In his rented bedroom, he finds a copy of Mary Todd Lincoln's letters, and her grief becomes entangled with his grief and the grief of all gay men of a similar age who have seen so many friends stolen from life by AIDS. In addition, he starts identifying with his landlord's dog, shut away in the study while his master is at work. Though slim, this rewarding volume is densely packed with feeling for those who have been lost, have held themselves back and not become what they might have been, or have been so afraid to love that now they find themselves alone. Highly recommended for gay studies collections in academic libraries and for larger public libraries as well.-Debbie Bogenschutz, Cincinnati State Technical & Community Coll. Lib. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.