Gay & Lesbian Fiction, Family & Friendship - Fiction

Endangered Species

Name: Endangered Species
Author: Louis Bayard
ISBN: 9781555836412

by Louis Bayard

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Overview

"In his witty and beautifully written novels, Louis Bayard is establishing Washington D.C. as the District of Comedy."-Bob Smith, author of Openly Bob, and Way to Go Smith

The Broome family is facing an uncertain future; however no one but youngest son Nick seems to notice. Driven by an inexplicable but driving certainty that they are on the brink of extinction, Nick vows to bring a child into the world by whatever means necessary. The problem? Nick is gay. The brave new world of parenting is explored as never before in Louis Bayard's new novel, which is full of the dry wit, snaking plot turns, and vivid, well-rounded characters that earned raves and fans for his first novel, Fool's Errand. Nick's quest for a surrogate mother will draw him to schizophrenics, Hispanic immigrants, body-pierced teenagers, female escorts, a God-fearing phlebotomist, an itinerant matchmaker, and an unbalanced but irrepressible young woman named Nattie, who ultimately may provide what he is seeking in the way he least expected. Alternately moving and very, very funny, Nick Broome's quest to leave a mark on the world drives straight to the heart of the evolving nature of love and family.

Louis Bayard is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Nerve.Com, Genre, Lambda Book Report, and the Washington Blade among others. He is the author of Fool's Errand, and lives in Washington, D.C.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In this well-crafted second novel, Nick Broome, the youngest son of a Washington, D.C., family, is facing an existential crisis, namely, the demise of his nonprocreative clan's family name. He wants desperately to bring life into the world, envisioning a boy in a blue parka as his ideal son and even going so far as to make a deal with himself to make a baby within a year. Thirty-four-year-old Nick refuses to adopt because his lump of love must share his DNA, and the usual boy-meets-girl route is not open to him, for Nick is gay. The bulk of the novel is a whirlwind tour of the world of artificial insemination and surrogacy. Nick's breeding quest takes him behind the door of sperm banks, where posters of European towers suggest phallic exuberance; when sperm collectors reject him, Nick tries to find a surrogate mother. His ads in the newspaper and on the Internet bring in, among others, a female escort, an angry teen and the unbalanced Nattie, whose brother, Joe, Nick meets in the mental hospital where Nattie has registered herself for a tuneup. Though Joe and Nick become lovers, he continues his search for a fertile vessel. His family is dying out, Nick believes, and he's doing nothing about it. As the novel reaches its crescendo, Nick foolishly treats Joe like a son and flirts dangerously with a contract matchmaker named Lyle, eventually learning more about love and himself. Though the novel's method is at times tiresome and the humor at best tepid, Bayard manages to keep our interest in Broome's quest while teaching us a thing or two about the force that drives procreation. Regional author appearances. (Apr.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.