Book #38 |
Book: Plays Well with Others | Author: Allan Gurganus | |
| Source: Library loan Format: Kindle |
Pages: 368 | Duration: 05/07/25 – 05/11/25 (5 days) | |
| Rating: ★★★☆☆ | Genres: fiction, magical realism, gay, LGBT, queer, New York, AIDS, chosen family | ||
| 📕10-word summary: Newly arrived southerner in NYC creates a brilliant chosen family. 🖌6-word review: Ran cold. Ran hot. Ran cold. |
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| 💭Favorite quote: “I sit reading the Times, waiting, though basically I have no talent for waiting.” | |||
| 🎓Some new-to-me words: rictus, toney, natch, filched, rube, rheostaticly, tintypes, juvenilia, pogrom, odalisque, comestibles, diptych, freesias, gessoed, tocking, rawboned, dandyism, fusty, zabaglione, cowcatcher, odalisquing | |||
| Description:* It’s 1980, and Hartley Mims Jr., a somewhat overbred Southerner, arrives in town to found his artistic career and finds a circle of brilliant friends. He soon discovers both Robert Christian Gustafson, archangelic boy composer of Symphony no. 1: The Titanic, and Alabama Byrnes, a failed Savannah debutante whose gigantic paintings reveal an outsized talent that she, 5-feet tall, can’t always live up to. This circle — sexually venturesome, frequently hungry, hooked on courage, caffeine, and the promise of immortality — makes history and most everybody else. The story chronicles a ragtag group of gifted kids who come to seek their fortunes; they find the low-paying joys of making art and the heady education only multiple erotic partners can provide. They suddenly encounter a brand-new disease like something out of fifth-rate sci-fi. Friends are soon questioning how much they really owe each other; they’re left with the ancient consolation of one another’s company and help. *From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: In the early chapters of this book, I found myself asking a couple of times, “Okay, who is the narrator here?” and “What exactly is going on right now?” — 2 questions, IMHO, a reader should never be asking. I waffled throughout the story as to whether this was a 3- or 4-star book. I thought of the first half as a 3. Then it really picked it up, and I was leaning toward a 4. But I completely lost interest in the ending, which had a section name of “Appendix,” so I almost didn’t read it. After an entire (very) realistic story, the last 15 or 20 pages was all magical realism, one of my least favorite genres, and worse, it was about heaven (thinly veiled as “paradise”) with 3 short chapters about “how everything works up here.” Not a fan. I will take a second to praise the use of the word “collusive” (instead of the overused “conspiratorial”) in: “…she flashed me one collusive wink that made me feel almost human again, partly included.” | |||
See the rest of the books I’ve read in 2025 and previous years: 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019.