Vanitas

Gay Times

A huge, sweeping canvas of a novel...the sort you can read again and again.

New York Times Book Review

Joseph Olshan tackles some big themes here most notably the power of sexual attraction and the mistakes people often make when they try to transform their lives...affectingly sensitive and subtle...a rich and intelligent novel.

Publishers Weekly

Provocative...Olshan sheds light on what it means to falsify history...even glamorize risk and death.

Library Journal - Kay Hogan

Love triangles are often the central theme in books and drama, yet how much more complex have our complicated lifestyles at the end of this century made the traditional love triangle? Consider all the players in this "triangle" of five: Sam, a bisexual writer; Jessie, a single mother; Rudy, a married Dutchman; Elliot, a wealthy, dying art dealer; and Bobby, an artist. Added to the mixture is, of course, the specter of AIDS. Still, love is an ageless human emotion, as are greed, ego, guilt, and a longing for beauty, all of which are examined in this modern tale that is part love story, part mystery, and part soap opera. Perhaps for all the unconventionality of life in the Nineties, some things remain the same. Written by the author of Clara's Heart, this book is recommended especially for gay literature collections.
—Library Journal

Alan Cheuse

Fascinating. . . .Olshan brings old love into the light, even as his book creates an intense interest in the future of his characters and their emotional fates
—National Public Radio's All Things Considered

Entertainment Weekly

Olshan weaves an involving plot. . . .Vanitas benefits from its artistic milieu.

Gay Times (London)

The result is a subtle and erudite novel, brushed with erotic tension and barely bridled passion. A novel about questions to which it doesn't presume to dictate answers, Vanitas is the sort of novel you can read and read again, each time detecting something different. It's that all too rare thing in gay fiction: a challenging read.

Genre

Olshan's grace as a stylist is evident here - his prose is nothing short of magisterial. Remarkable, sensitive and stark, Vanitas imparts the quiet wisdom that suffering brings. Olshan explores loneliness, desire, and entitlement, blending levity with pathos. It's a definite privilege to read.

London Sunday Times

The novel broods intriguingly upon a virulent contemporary cause of mortality . . . That ingenuity sets into compelling motion a series of interlocking motifs to do with forgery, possessiveness, jealousy and paternity.

New York Times Book Review

Joseph Olshan tackles some big themes here - most notably the power of sexual attraction and the mistakes people often make when they try to transform their lives. . . .affectingly sensitive and subtle. . .a rich and intelligent novel.

on Sunday (London)

Joseph Olshan has upheld the grand tradition of bitter tragediennes in the waspish, bedridden figure of art dealer, Elliot Garland.

The Guardian(London)

Vanitas, and indeed all of Olshan's novels, are novels of great obsession, of transcendent moments of perfect love set against a backdrop of hovering betrayal and death. At the same time, however, Olshan works hard to create a realistic texture of both mundane and telling details. It is to Olshan's credit that he avoids an easy conventional resolution, remaining true to the "curious amalgam of many different emotions" that make up love.

The Lambda Book Report

Some of the most beautiful and surprising moments are those in which the dreams, fears and hopes of these people are imagined. . . .The orchestration of these character explorations is delicate and skillful.

The Nashville Tennessean

Joseph Olshan is truly a gifted writer and Vanitas is a story of the lonely - and often painful - search that humans sometimes undertake while attempting to find happiness.