Review by Booklist Review
In a sweet, loopy, mismatched love story nearly derailed by the hard facts of today's sexual reality, twentysomething Elisa, a slightly wild and moderately promiscuous artist, and Gabe, much older, sober, and careful, take turns describing their complicated involvement. Gabe's caution comes from being busted and imprisoned for dealing drugs; Elisa has never been caught at anything. Companionable sex and fun develop into love and plans of marriage, and Elisa, in a moment of whimsy, gets an unnecessary blood test and comes up HIV-positive. He is supportive; she is reckless, resuming sexual relations with the man who infected her. Gabe is nearly too good to be tolerated, and Elisa is nearly too silly to survive, but they sort things out and ultimately make an unlikely but irresistible couple, thanks to Silber's deft writing and deep affection for her characters. A timely and wonderful tale. --Danise Hoover
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
An unlikely couple weather a crisis in this forthright novel about love and accommodation. Elisa, a 20-something flighty artist, and Gabe, a bookish, much older former drug dealer and ex-con, meet and fall in love in New York City. Their voices, strong and distinctive, grant immediacy to alternating chapters, in which their future takes an unexpected form. Just before they are to be married, Elisa's discovery that her name is an acronym for the AIDS test she is about to take enzyme linked immuno-sorbent assay moves her to laughter. But when she discovers she is HIV positive, she turns against the stable and caring Gabe. PEN/ Hemingway Award winner Silber (for Household Words) is unsparing in her description of what it is like to live with AIDS. "I woke up further and remembered that all the moistures of my body were not simple anymore, that my leaking female self was slick with danger." Deep in denial about her mortality, Elisa betrays Gabe by reigniting an abusive relationship with her ex-boyfriend, Jason, who is also living with AIDS. Her path of self-destruction is grounded in guilt, but it eventually leads to personal growth and acceptance. The sex, drugs and older man/younger woman angle are familiar themes, but Silber's tender tale of how Elisa and Gabe develop a loving, mature relationship is delivered with clear-eyed candor and not a whit of sentimentality. Agent, Geri Thoma. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
On her day job at a camera store, Elisa, a young art school graduate in New York City, meets an older man named Gabe. Serious and introspective, he's been at the store for many years and spends his leisure time reading Kafka; she's recovering from a somewhat abusive relationship and a drug-and-party lifestyle. Classic girl meets very different boy story, with the sad twist of her discovery of a positive HIV status. What keeps this novel (a follow-up to In My Other Life: Stories) from being either too sad or too maudlin is the edgy cast of the characters and their well-presented perspectives, found in alternating chapters. It's difficult to imagine that such a simple plot could yield such a profound, engaging tale. This was such a good story that I missed it when I finished reading. Recommended for all fiction collections. Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., VA (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
Silber's acutely observed fourth (In My Other Life, 2000, etc.) follows the trail of emotions left behind an HIV diagnosis as it touches the lives of one New York City couple. Gabe and Elisa have something of a May-September romance: she's a painter in her early 20s, he's 15 years her senior. They meet where Gabe works, the Eagle Eye Camera shop, and quickly fall in love. Gabe, a gentle, introverted man who spends much of his spare time reading and listening to music, contrasts with Elisa, an attractive extrovert with a need for stability. Both have drugs in their pasts: Gabe once did well for himself as a dealer, until landing a brief prison term that cured him of his appetite for adventure. For Elisa, it was the bliss of drugs that had marked her life with Jason, a beautiful risk-taker who abused her off and on. As the two now undergo preliminary blood tests prior to their wedding, Elisa's test returns HIV positive, and though Gabe commits to a careful, unmarried life of safe sex and moderation with her, Elisa's appetite for raw stimulation leads her back to Jason, with whom sex is the aggressive pleasure it once was. Elisa feels beautiful again. She moves in with Jason, but when she falls seriously ill and he tires of her, she takes a couch in a friend's apartment. Eventually, she is reunited with Gabe, and after he and she attend the wedding of two AIDS patients in a hospital, the story closes on a gently hopeful but indeterminate note. Refreshingly unsentimental: Silber writes with a modest intimacy that brings her characters to heartbreaking clarity even as she remains true to the ambiguities that plague every life-and love.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
