Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Seven stories that feature gay men in love comprise Weltner's (In a Time of Combat for the Angel) new collection. Todd, the narrator of "My Faithless, Faithful Friend," shops and cleans for clients who are dying of AIDS, but never gets credit in the eulogies. "You try to be a good person," says his former lover, Jay, himself an AIDS victim, "but, like most people, you just can't face things as they are." Weltner throws his restless characters into moral crises that pit ego against honor and desire against death. In the best stories, such as "Hearing Voices" and "Self-Portrait with Cecil and Larry," the characters emerge with a voice or poise strong enough to balance their perils. Weltner's Southern background informs such gothic creations as Cecil, a wry aesthete, and Larry, a blunt midget wrestler. The longest story, "The Greek Head," is the least effective, perhaps because its most interesting character is absent. The deceased Don contributes more in flashback than his partner and lovers-manqué do in their rather soapy squabbling and pining. Infused with humor, "Unlike Himself" is a kind of gay Twilight Zone episode in which a pair of physical opposites learn empathy in the most literal fashion. A mordant moralist, Weltner too often veers into melodrama, but his dilemmas are topical and provocative. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In this collection of seven stories, Weltner (In Time for Combat of the Angel, Five Fingers, 1991) explores the nature of human relationships. Though most of his characters are gay, their experiences and concerns are universal: maintaining a long-term relationship in the face of boredom and petty jealousies, dealing with the death of a loved one, overcoming the horror of war, and discovering the true meaning of friendship. Weltner is skilled at creating a well-set stage on which his characters play out their passions. Whether San Francisco, the French Quarter of New Orleans, or a small Southern town, each community is vibrant and believable. Recommended for larger fiction collections and those specializing in gay fiction.Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Idaho Lib., Moscow (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Seven stories (six previously unpublished) reveal a wide range of gay lives in America, from those of southern small-town outcasts to those of San Francisco sophisticates. But despite the range, this latest collection from the author of Identity and Difference (1990), etc., proves only fitfully satisfying. The sorrows of loners and the redemptive power of music are threaded through Weltner's tales. In the title piece, a young man living an unremarkable life in a newly prosperous southern town is drawn out of his meager existence by music. Need for a car brings him into contact with another loner, a gifted mechanic with a passion for Mahler whose garage is about to be bulldozed to make way for a mall, and both the music and the man bring him closer to understanding himself. In ``Buddy Loves Jo Ann,'' another outsider, a dejected old man, is asked by his only friend, whom he's known since childhood, to help her end her suffering. He loses his nerve and flees to a rundown seaside resort, where he's saved from drowning himself by a gruff, tattooed cook who gives him shelter, the money to return home, and a meaningful kiss goodbye. City scenes range from the bars in New Orleans in ``Unlike Himself,'' where a hustling hunk tangles with a repressed professor of literature, each giving the other something terrible yet liberating, to the apartments of gay San Francisco, where the sudden death of a record store owner in ``The Greek Head'' sends the owner's longtime companion into a funk--a funk compounded by the deceased having willed his most prized possession to a downstairs neighbor. So motley a crew of characters, with all too human failings, are both a strength and a weakness here: The frankness they're presented with often seems at odds with a lingering sense of contrivance in their relationships.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
