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| 📕10-word summary: Chronicles the highs and lows of a decades-long, rule-breaking romance. 🖌6-word review: Funny. Sad. Infuriating. Heartwarming. Always interesting. |
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| 💭Favorite quote: “He relished conversation; he celebrated and savored anointing a shimmeringly pleasing word or phrase, treating the English language as a treasure trove to be plundered. Or more plainly: he loved to talk and make sure he was good at it.” | |||||||||
| 🎓Some new-to-me words: straw boater, hauteur, antediluvian, homunculi, officious, swain, vicuña, inveigle, sisal, Etruscan, frippery, fustiness | |||||||||
| Description:* Devastatingly handsome and insanely rich, Farrell Covington is capable of anything and impossible to resist. He’s a clear-eyed romantic, an aesthete but not a snob, self-indulgent yet wildly generous. As the son of one of the country’s most powerful and deeply conservative families, the world could be his. But when he falls for Nate Reminger, an aspiring writer from a nice Jewish family in Piscataway, New Jersey, the results are passionate and catastrophic. Together, the two embark on a uniquely managed romance that spans half a century. They are inseparable—except for the many years when they are apart. Moving from the ivy-covered bastion of Yale to NYC, L.A., and eventually all over the world, Farrell and Nate experience the tremendous upheaval and social change of the last 50 years. From the freedom of gay life in 1970s Manhattan to the Hollywood closet, the AIDS epidemic, and the profound strides of the LGBTQ+ movement. *From goodreads.com’s synopsis. |
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| Thoughts: When I was still on Facebook, an ad for this book appeared on my timeline. It sounded interesting, so I added it to my library to-read list. I thoroughly enjoyed it with the comedic highlight being the description of a wedding at the beginning of chapter 15 and the “take-that | up-yours | touché” highlight being in a reading-of-the-will scene in the middle of chapter 18. Unfortunately, my pet peeve word appeared at about ⅓ of the way into the book: “There were photos of the happy, or at least conspiratorial, couple at the altar, arm in arm before a floral arch at the reception…” The larger-than-life characterization of Farrell is most excellent. This author, also a screenplay writer, has worked as an uncredited script doctor on films including The Addams Family and The First Wives Club. He was credited through the pseudonym “Joseph Howard” for his work on Sister Act, which was originally intended for Bette Midler. The screenplay went through many revisions and was re-fashioned for Whoopi Goldberg. (At this time, Rudnick refused to have his real name associated with the script.) He received sole writing credit for Addams Family Values, In & Out, and the screen version of his play Jeffrey. I would consider this book for a future Mostly Social Book Club book. | |||||||||
See the rest of the books I’ve read in 2025 and previous years: 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019.