I wasn't really sure what I was feeling about this book and what I was getting into when I started reading it. I think it's a powerful book because it tells the story of people from all walks of life and how the HIV/AIDS epidemic affected them and their families. This story is depicting the worst time in the 1980's and 1990's when there wasn't as much research or the drugs that are available today in 2018. It also describes HIV/AIDS as not only a "gay man's disease"; that anyone can get it despite what race and color you are. ( )

I really loved this book. With prose and a voice both succinct and evocative, I felt drawn in by every detail I learned about these characters and their lives. I was only thrown off by one particular detail involving Mateo's parentage that I won't divulge here - but even then the quality of the story and writing was too good to be bothered by it. ( )

A wonderful heartbreaking New York story

This story weaves together a couple generations of New Yorkers from disparate places, the AIDS epidemic and it's devastating toll, artists and family love. It is a story that moves you to tears, smiles, shame and ultimately satisfaction in the manner in which the author ends the story. ( )

The Christodora (an actual apartment building on the Lower East Side of NYC) has an interesting history and I was excited to read a novel that featured it as a setting. Written by Tim Murphy, The Christodora is an ambitious novel that deftly captures the AIDS epidemic and the ensuing activist movement around it. The novel spans four decades – from the first arrival of AIDS to the future in 2021 – much of it centered around the character of Mateo (and the family and friends in his orbit), an adopted Latino son to white, upper middle class parents. Murphy is clearly a gifted and skilled writer and his journalistic background allowed for nuanced detail throughout the book that gave me a better understanding of the far-reaching effects and impacts of AIDS. I tend to shy away from fiction that delves into recreational drug use and I also tend to not sympathize with characters who are drug addicts. However, in the hands of Murphy, he humanized this topic that is so difficult for me to read and showed me a different side of it that led me to feel sympathetic to those who are addicted to drugs. He told me their story and for the first time, I was able to see it through a different lens. Murphy covers a lot of ground in this book and in addition to AIDs and activism, he also explores race, adoption, identity, gentrification and class. Richly layered, there are topics running beneath the surface such as parenting that put the novel on an even deeper level for me. Many thanks to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for providing me with copy in exchange for an unbiased review.
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I certainly was the target demographic for this book. Having grown up in the timeframe the book primarily takes place in, having loved NYC as an East Coaster and having lost family members and loved ones to AIDS, this book had the potential to crush me. I was actually a little nervous to start it because I was worried it would be emotionally devastating, a la A Little Life, by Hanya Yanagihara. I went in bracing myself, but instead it was a complex character study of a family, their friends and offspring with NYC and the AIDS crisis as both backdrop and purpose for bringing a good number of the characters together.

I really fell in with these characters. I didn't love them all. Some were quite frustrating in their obstinance or inability to see outside themselves. Those flaws gave the story layers and complexity. I liked the passion and that some of them didn't reach redemption or clarity. And I appreciated that there wasn't a tidy bow at the end, though there was enough that brought the book to a logical ending.

My only complaint, as it were, was that I wasn't in love with how the timeline moved. At points in the story, it felt too jarring a leap to make in time, or we just started to follow random names for no discernible reason. I also felt that some of the pop culture references were sprinkled in too liberally and may feel very awkward in a decade.

But even with those challenges, I still would give the book a 3.5-4. I think it is a very good book for someone who may want a character study of NYC during the AIDS Crisis and from outside the traditional gay lens, though with important gay characters. It would be a good accompaniment to the masterwork of the subject- Randy Shilts' nonfiction reportage, And The Band Played On. And for another, very different look at NYC in that time, the new Netflix TV series The Get Down which documents in vibrancy the birth of hip hop and graffiti culture in NYC. ( )