Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 29, 1990 TAG: 9004290220
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by JERE REAL
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The shocking nature of AIDS as a cultural disaster of epic proportions is contained in its grim numbers: more deaths already than the nation lost in the Vietnam War. But its personal, political, religious - and, yes, even philosophical - considerations are best illustrated by the remarkable body of literature (and other art, too) this tragedy has already produced by way of reaction.
Paul Monette's new novel now joins the notable body of AIDS literature. Monette, who in the 1970s and '80s established himself with such diverting works as "Taking Care of Mrs. Carroll," "The Gold Diggers," "The Long Shot" (a Hollywood murder novel) and "Lightfall," won critical plaudits just a year or so ago with his non-fiction memoir, "Borrowed Time," which told in moving terms the sense of love and loss involved in the death of his lover to the disease.
In his latest fictional work, he turns to the world of the survivors of AIDS disasters.
"Afterlife" is his portrayal of several men who have lost their partners to the disease; how they face the rebuilding of their emotional lives, their careers, their own potential susceptibility to the virus and eventually the psychological trauma of living with the inevitability of death, a universal consideration most of us (quite naturally) choose all too often not to think about. ("Why don't you NOT tell me about it?" said a gay character in "The Boys in the Band"; and death is certainly that kind of topic.)
Here, Monette explores the lives of three "AIDS widowers" in the time after the deaths of their partners. Three rather unlikely friends have become acquainted in Los Angeles at Cedars-Sinai Hospital as they shared a common fate: the death of a loved one.
In the aftermath (the "afterlife" of the title) Steven Shaw, Sonny Cevethas and Dell Espinoza have continued to meet socially at a Saturday night dinner in a kind of informal support group. After a year, the group is growing apart, yet the loss that united them is not over.
Steven overeats and pays less attention to his travel agency. Dell, a Mexican, has turned his loss into rage against public insensitivity of AIDS and its sufferers, and is on the verge of becoming a terrorist. Sonny, a waiter given to working out to maintain his Grecian god physique, indulges in denial about ever succumbing to the disease as he seeks cures through astrology and New Age solutions.
Monette has a sharp eye for what have been, all too often, the pathetic reactions of the public to AIDS. He gives us the TV evangelist, Mother Evangeline, who insists that Jesus would never have cured a man with AIDS (shades of Jerry Falwell's view that AIDS was God's "retribution" against gays) and some terrifying parents who - when learning their son is gay and afflicted with the disease - tell him not to come home for Christmas and to go to church.
Monette's is a powerful book in that it reveals humans at their best in adversity, and frequently at their worst. For many readers, "Afterlife" will be an unsettling experience. For others (like this reviewer who only this week learned of the death of a long-ago high school friend to AIDS), the book is a strong metaphor for loss, a reminder of all our mortality.
by CNB