How's Your Romance?: Concluding the Buddies Cycle

For a generation, Ethan Mordden's tales about a tightly knit circle of friends who live within the shifting confines of gay Manhattan have entertained tens of thousands of readers and devoted fans. Now Mordden returns to his best-loved characters - the ultimate hunk Carlo; the best friend Dennis Savage; J. (who was once Little Kiwi); Cosgrove the maturing elf-child; and narrator and ultimate observer Bud - in this eagerly awaited new volume in the cycle.

How's Your Romance? brings the series and the characters full circle - from the early days just post-Stonewall to the vicissitudes, delights, and challenges of the early twenty-first century. Blending the comic, the sexy, the tragic, and the at once realistic and idealistic, these stories are Mordden at his very best.

Mordden explores a tricky moral universe in which emotional loyalty is exalted but sexual fidelity is not assumed...There is a sense of real pain amid the zingers; Mordden's characters run their mouths to avoid baring their souls." — New York Times Book Review on Some Men Are Lookers

After a hiatus of eight years, Ethan Mordden returns to the fictional universe for which he is most beloved in this latest, possibly last, volume in his much lauded "Buddies" cycle. Following the exploits of his best-loved characters — Dennis Savage, J. (who was once Little Kiwi), Carlo, the slowly maturing 'elf-child' Cosgrove, and narrator Bud - as he lays bare the changed emotional landscape of the city within a city that is Gay Manhattan. Blending the comic, the sexy, the tragic, and the at once idealistic and realistic, these stories are Ethan Mordden at his very best.

Library Journal

This fifth and concluding volume of Mordden's "Buddies" series (once a trilogy, it seems to have evolved into a "cycle") offers more loosely interwoven stories about a group of gay male friends living in New York City. These core characters were all featured in the earlier volumes, which have been published over a period of 20 years; here, they continue with their lives, but there's no real plot moving them forward. Readers familiar with the earlier "Buddies" books will undoubtedly be interested in this installment. However, while the story line is likely to resonate with urban gay men, it may be confusing to most other readers, as Mordden frequently makes esoteric references that only insiders to the subculture would understand. Moreover, the dialog sounds stilted at times, as though English weren't the characters' first language. Mordden is well known for a large body of nonfiction work on theater and opera, and many of the book's redeeming moments come when he tosses in a choice theater tidbit. Recommended for larger public libraries.-Caroline Mann, Univ. of Portland Lib., OR Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Ethan Mordden's writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Baum Bugle, and the late and unlamented Christopher Street. He has recently completed a six-volume history of the American musical, from the 1920s through the 1970s, capping this with The Happiest Corpse I've Ever Seen: The Last 25 Years of the Broadway Musical. He lives in Manhattan.