Starred review from April 17, 2023
An aspiring writer becomes enamored of a dashing fellow student at Yale in Rudnick’s dazzling and funny latest (after Playing the Palace). It’s 1973, and narrator Nate Reminger, who is Jewish, struggles to achieve his literary ambitions. He soon meets flamboyant and outspoken Farrell Covington, who was raised in a powerful Wasp family and “smells like beauty and money and youth.” Dazzled by Farrell’s sophistication and confidence, Nate quickly falls head over heels for Farrell. Despite their differences, they share affinities for gay culture and such celebrities as Bette Midler, and after sleeping together, they fall into a long-running relationship until Farrell’s father puts a stop to it. After college, Nate moves to New York City, where he hones his playwriting skills and basks in the post-Stonewall gay scene. As Rudnick moves the story into the ’80s, Nate’s successful playwriting career earn him screenwriting work in Hollywood, and, despite the disapproving Covingtons, the pair fight to make time for each other, a resource that suddenly becomes all too precious during the early days of the AIDS epidemic. The author proves himself to be in top form, and each page is loaded with quippy dialogue and winning character work. This is a roaring good time.
Starred review from January 1, 2024
Both terribly funny and deeply touching, playwright, screenwriter, and novelist Rudnick's (Playing the Palace) latest novel is an exuberant love story and a celebration of gay culture. In 1973, during his first year at Yale, Nate, a middle-class Jewish kid from suburban New Jersey, meets and immediately falls for Farrell, a drop-dead gorgeous, uber-rich guy from a conservative Midwestern family of business tycoons. Fortunately, the feeling is mutual, and the couple's 50-year roller coaster of a relationship witnesses the setbacks and victories of the gay rights movement as well as the devastating AIDS epidemic. Narrator Daniel Henning delivers Rudnick's deliciously witty, often raunchy dialogue with perfect comedic timing. While his portrayal of the vivacious Farrell is spectacular, Nate and the secondary characters, including the story's homophobic villains, are depicted with equal verve. Nate and Farrell's life together is full of hilarious personal and professional adventures (as well as lots of steamy sex) spanning from New York City to Los Angeles. The lovers also face their fair share of heartbreak, and Henning manages tone shifts with aplomb. VERDICT Listeners will alternately cackle with glee and gasp in sympathy throughout Henning's virtuoso performance of Rudnick's immersive, sexy tragicomedy. Essential listening.--Beth Farrell
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