As a fan of [b:Cartwheel|17857661|Cartwheel|Jennifer duBois|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1375820584s/17857661.jpg|24998893], I was very excited to see a new title from Jennifer duBois. At the center of the novel is Matthew Miller, a gay NYC attorney turned Maury Povitch style talk show host. In alternating chapters, we hear from Semi, a playwright and Mattie's former lover, and Cel, a pr flak for the Mattie M show. Matthew's earlier life, before and during the AID epidemic is seen through Semi's point of view. In the present, as seen through Cel's world, Matthew's television show is at the center of a huge news story about a Columbine style shooting by two teenage boys.

To say this book took on a lot would be an understatement. It attempts to tackle the AIDS epidemic AND the coarsening of American culture and tie them together through these three characters. For me, it didn't really work. The storyline narrated by Semi that addresses the AIDS epidemic was far superior, and I think this book could have been so much better had it maintained that singular focus. Chapter 19 was beautifully written, and I think it represents what duBois can really do with her writing. She has an incredible vocabularly and can write in a poetic, but very fresh, way that makes you really think. This book doesn't spoon feed the reader a thing, and in some ways that is very intellectually stimulating.

Unfortunately, the portion of the story about the shooting, the blaming of the show, and Cel's attempt to handle it, was very dull. None of the three characters is really as fully developed as they need to be to stir empathy in the reader, but Cel's was the one that seemed especially flat.

If only the book had tightened its focus and kept it squarely on gay life in NYC and the devastation of the AIDS epidemic, it could have been something more special. If all the chapters were like chapter 19, it would have been a five star read for me.



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I came across this book doing some work on adding OP dates in CK. The idea of a connection between a fictional school shooter and a talk show host a la Jerry Springer intrigued me. But it didn’t go the way of sensation the way those kinds of shows do. Instead it’s more internal and contemplative and most of that comes from one voice - Semi, former lover of the host in question, Mattie M.

The description says that his secrets and scandals will be revealed, but they aren’t really the focus and in the end they aren’t. Instead we get an inside look at what it was like to be out and gay in New York City from the early 1960s to the novel’s present day; 1993. At times it’s gut-wrenching in its portrayal of how these men were treated, but the flip side is Semi and his friends’ absolute joy in flying in the face of convention. Of course their downfall will come in the horrendous death toll to AIDS and the casual cruelty with which pretty much everyone viewed it. Like it was their fault; their degeneracy brought it on and they had to suffer the consequences. There are lots of good insights and musings in his sections of the narrative.

The other section comes from Cel; junior PR person for Matti’s exploitation show. She’s young, inexperienced and out of her depth. Mostly that’s not her fault in the sense that she’s done anything wrong, but neither does she seem to try hard and instead lets the producer basically roll over her and force her into situations needing a Red Shirt to handle them. If she dies (figuratively) it won’t matter. So she spends a lot of time trying to live what she thinks is how a 25-year-old should live in New York when she has a good job, maybe even an envious one. If she didn’t complain about it all the time.

Eventually it becomes obvious that Mattie and Semi will meet again in the book’s present time frame although it isn’t obvious how. In the end it mimics the cruel parody of the show that basically put the school shooters over the edge. In what turns out to be a very-spun story almost entirely consisting of glossing over the truth, one of the school victims is brought into a show that Mattie is also guesting on. It’s an ambush and one that Mattie himself has worked into his own show to humiliate his guests and boost his ratings. Only in the end do we see how wrong the victim’s testimony really is when it’s revealed that one of the shooters had written to Mattie. It’s a pretty sad letter and one that makes it easy to understand (not condone) why the kids committed the horrible act they did.

A quiet novel worth reading. ( )