Starred Review. 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)

In his fifth work of fiction, Andrew Holleran, author of the widely praised Dancer from the Dance (1978), explores the complex issues surrounding grief while offering multifaceted impressions of Washington, D.C. Critics praised Holleran's lyrical writing, his subtle and flavorful characterizations, and the beauty of his observations—especially in his evocations of the city. Several admired Holleran's refusal to deal with grief in simplistic terms. John Freeman carped that the novel was a "talky piece of fiction" in which "dialogue nudges the narrative along." But even he admitted that "the languorous beauty of Holleran's observations gives the book bottom and weight." Most critics agree with Michael Upchurch that "this brief, quiet novel may be [Holleran's] best yet."

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

*Starred Review* A pensive, creative, and haunting novel that speaks expressly to the heart without sentimentality, by the author of Dancer from the Dance (1978), an important novel from the 1970s-'80s gay-lit renaissance. The title of Holleran's new novel states its theme. He offers the story of a middle-aged gay man heading to Washington, D.C., to live and teach for a short term, to get away from his hometown after his mother's death. He takes a room in an elegant townhouse owned by another middle-aged gay man, who is slowly and quietly grieving over the loss of youthful energy, attractiveness, and prowess. While living in Washington and commiserating with his landlord and the friend they have in common over the loss of lives the tsunami of AIDS caused in the '80s, he rather accidentally picks up a volume containing the letters of Mary Todd Lincoln, and he is taken by her grief and sense of displacement after her husband's death and ends up reading every page. His plan, however, especially in coming to Washington, is to start life over again, which Mrs. Lincoln was never able to do--her grief and loneliness became a deep well from which she couldn't escape. Holleran's "message"--that grief is never avoidable for any of us--is so sensitively rendered that it never impedes the swift development of the story line. Brad Hooper