Publishers Weekly
Brian Moss is the urban gay everyman. Nearing 40 in 1995, when Grossman's nicely nuanced but somewhat pat fourth novel (after Unexpected Child) is set, Brian has settled for sex with strangers. His incomplete dissertation on painter Toulouse-Lautrec haunts him. He toils four night a week as a friendly bartender and one day a week as a frustrated art history instructor, career paths that disappoint his hard-driving land developer father, who is recovering from a mild stroke. His drift also disturbs his critically doting, loving twin sister, who followed their father into the real estate business. In general, it's an unsettled autumn for Brian plus, a man who romanced him has been seeing a psychologist about going straight. Winter is a season of real discontent: his father suffers a more debilitating stroke and then dies, though not before father and son achieve an emotional reconciliation; his college gig is in jeopardy; a co-worker's lover is diagnosed with cocktail-resistant HIV; and his putative boyfriend disappears. All's well come spring, however: his boyfriend has returned; his co-worker's lover is on the mend; he's offered the position of humanities dean at his college; and he inherits a portion of his father's sizable estate. Grossman's happily-ever-after plot is predictable, but the novel is redeemed by an engrossing cast of secondary characters. (Oct.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
The neatly ordered days of a gay man in New York are disrupted by his irascible father's illness. Grossman (Unexpected Child, 2000) follows art historian and bartender Brian Moss through the last unpleasant weeks of the life of his father Avery, a real-estate developer not mellowed by age. The senior Moss suffers a series of small strokes that alarm Brian's twin sister Beryl, who, as a successful real-estate developer, is the son Avery wishes he had had. The philandering Avery reared the twins with the help of an African-American housekeeper after their mother was killed in an automobile accident when the children were five. Throughout his adult life, Brian has had nothing to do with his father, who has been openly contemptuous of his son's interest in art and men. Living in almost monastic quarters in Manhattan, drawing beers for the gay clientele of The Barracks to support himself, Brian has found an outlet for his interests in art at a New Jersey community college, and sexual release in anonymous encounters at the Shackle, a bar much rougher than his own. Then, just as his father's illness begins to disrupt the dull balance Brian has reached, he makes an unexpected emotional connection with one of those anonymous sexual contacts. The possibilities offered by that encounter, as well as revelations about his mother's last days, help send Brian to Paris in the company of his charming young niece. And there, in the quarter glamorized by Brian's favorite painter Toulouse-Lautrec, his life is pleasantly jostled yet again. Deftly done.
