Description
Coming Soon
Mikey, a young, gay, Los Angeles man whose open marriage to Robert is souring, is flooded by thoughts–of his native Bronx, his first love, and his Jewish heritage–that force him to reckon with the reality of AIDS.
Sadownick’s ambitious first novel combines AIDS activism, Jewish folklore, New Age therapies, kinky sex and some extraordinary passages about life in contemporary Venice, Calif., and the Bronx of yesteryear. At the center is Michael Kaplan, an AIDS journalist living in post-riot Los Angeles. Sadownick juxtaposes the ghosts of Michael’s adolescence in the Bronx–his Polish grandmother Frieda, his jazz musician brother and his Puerto Rican teenage lover–against his current struggles in L.A., particularly his deteriorating 10-year relationship with Robert, an AIDS activist and performance artist. Some portions of Michael’s life seem overlooked, others are overwritten, and at times the mysticism gets out of hand, particularly in the novel’s denouement. Mostly, however, Sadownick’s clear understanding of his protagonist and his own keen journalistic eye for detail allow the material to transcend its simplistic plot, making this an absorbing story. As an editor tells Michael after he is arrested as a participant while covering a demonstration for his newspaper: “Everyone knows you’ve crossed a line . . . I’m not sure that makes great writing, but it makes a good read.” —Publishers Weekly
“New Age spirituality, AIDS activism, Yiddishe apparitions that schmooze and kvetch with the best of them, a Jewish boy’s Puerto Rican first love, marvelously crafted and developed ethnic characters, racial tension and tolerance, and a touch of sadomasochism are just a few of the seemingly disparate elements Sadownick successfully weaves into this tale of the old and the new, tradition and radicalism, and gay lives and straight lives in America today. Mikey is struggling to maintain his sanity and his relationship with Robert as he sails between the separate universes known as the Bronx and Venice, California. Eventually, he must open himself up to the past-and especially to his dead grandmother, Frieda-in order to accept the present. Readers will appreciate Sadownick’s imaginative narration, unique voice, and plot and character development, which truly break new ground in gay fiction. Recommended for general collections and gay and lesbian collections.” —Kevin M. Roddy, Univ. of Hawaii at Hilo Library, Library Journa
“Mikey, a gay writer in postriot L.A., finds his longtime relationship with Robert (“one of the handsomest men in the Western world”) in distress and his world spinning into chaos. Into a void that threatens to overcome him surge the voice and image of Frieda, his dead grandmother; memories of Mikey’s boyhood rush back, and with them, the haunting recollection of Hector, the Puerto Rican teenager who was his first love during the time when Puerto Ricans and Jews waged turf war in the Bronx. Sadownick shows us his pubescent hero, lying that he’s going to play ball and instead sneaking off to synagogue with Frieda–as much to catch a glimpse of Hector on the basketball court as to accompany his grandmother. He counterpoints yearning, adolescent Mikey wanting “to devour breathless moans like they were M & Ms” with grown Mikey brooding like a jilted wife, spying on the lover he correctly suspects of infidelity. Mostly, in this first novel that is by turns funny, darkly compelling, and moving, he shows us Mikey desperately trying to make sense of a world gone mad.” —Whitney Scott, Booklist
“Side-by-side portraits of a gay man at two points in his life: This first novel contrasts the closeted teenager, high on first love, with his older self, the veteran of a crumbling gay marriage. Mikey Kaplan comes of age in the Bronx in the 1970s, a time when the borough’s Jews and Puerto Ricans were fighting turf wars. Looking for more than quick sex in Times Square movie theaters, Mikey notices Hector hanging out with his PR buddies as he escorts grandmother Frieda to the synagogue. The teenagers fumble their way to sex and love in a context of ethnic rivalry; through love’s alchemy, their insults become endearments. Surprisingly, Hector is accepted warmly by Mikey’s parents; the storm comes when Mikey’s brother Stan (“the Jewish mambo whiz”) brings his black girlfriend to dinner. By now Frieda is dead, but Mikey’s most beloved relative will appear to him in visions; then Hector splits, his attempt to get cautious Mikey to elope with him a failure. Fifteen years later, Mikey is a journalist in Los Angeles; his long marriage to AIDS activist and performance artist Robert is being destroyed by Robert’s brazen cheating. The Bronx passages are noisy with ethnic friction; in Los Angeles, Sadownick pumps up his material with the drama of AIDS. Two demos and an anxious buzz about HIV status supply the emotional charge lacking in Mikey’s odyssey and relationships with his lovers and grandmother (his Jungian anima, his shrink observes helpfully); he is the cipher at the novel’s hollow center. Sadownick has not yet found a voice that will sound clearly through the static of his turbulent worlds.” —Kirkus
