A-LISTS book rage by mark hernandez
PORTRAIT OF AN ADDICT AS A YOUNG MAN Bill Clegg has got it all going on. He’s a successful good-looking young gay
man, a literary agent of Burnes & Clegg with famous clients, and well known for his lively parties thrown at his chic apartment at One Fifth Avenue which he shares with his filmmaker boyfriend, the loving and supportive Noah. And then one day he tries crack cocaine, and just as you’d expect, everything spirals down straight into hell. He empties his bank account, and can’t stop drinking and doing crack, meeting up in the most insane places to fuel his addiction and descends into a world of paranoia and bizarre behavior that makes your jaw drop. And though this sounds like a typical plot of a novel, it turns out this time it’s absolutely true and real. There’s something remarkable about this particular
tale of addiction and recovery, one that has caused so many big magazines to write lengthy spreads about Bill and his story, told in the first person present tense in Portrait of an Addict As a Young Man. I highly recommend you discover for yourself why no one is able to put his book down. You’ll find yourself crying, shaking your head and cheering for Bill after what he’s been through. What an incredible story!
ROLE MODELS If you’re one of those people
like me who would love to hang out for a while with John Waters and probably leave a few hours later nursing your stomach because you’ve been laughing non-stop the whole time. Well, his new book Role Models is the next best thing to experiencing that. There’s no one else quite like John Waters and he can turn a phrase in ways you’ve never heard and choice of words constantly catch you off guard. Along with other rantings and ravings, he lists his role models in life, and shares with us in his unmistak- able style how these people affected him and deserve your consideration. By the end, you’ll be left with many unforgettable thoughts, such as his suggestion that the only way to die is by spontaneous combustion at a rare moment when you “feel so guilty and happy, so obsessed, so driven and so fanatical that you just burst into flames for no apparent reason on the street.”
SET SAIL FOR MURDER A comment on the dust jacket of this fourth Polly Pepper Mystery Set Sail for
Murder by very-out gay author R. T. Jordan hits the nail right on the head... “What if Carol Burnett had starred in Murder She Wrote?” That will give you an idea of how much fun it is to read these murder mysteries. In this episode, Polly Pepper herself, along with her 20-something horny gay son Tim and her trusty maid and sidekick Placenta go on a cruise—a reunion cruise reuniting the wild and crazy cast members of the Polly Pepper Playhouse which can’t help but result in lots of new drama right out of the dock. And sure enough, things start out badly when Laura, the former cast member who put together the reunion cruise is found dead, her throat slit by a sharpened edge of a DVD taken from the
Polly Pepper Playhouse Collector’s Edition DVD set. Polly, Tim and Placenta can’t help themselves and bungle their way through ultimately solving the crime. Yeah, it’s like that. It’s silly, crazy, hilarious and you’ll love it.
THE HOUSE ON SHADOW LANE Robert Heylmun, author of The House on Shadow Lane (and who now
makes his home in San Diego) gives us a wonderful book that’s a memorable read. We start with Hal, who’s picking up the pieces after a failed relationship and he decides to rent a rather large house on Shadow Lane and build a new life. It’s big enough that he rents a room out to Tom and Mike, and they bring along a lot of good things which help Hal feel he’s back amongst the living again. I’ll bet you didn’t expect that to happen, since we all know that roomates never work out very well. But then along comes Simon, and Hal falls in love again with a wonderful man. Together with their new group of interesting friends, we get to experience a depth and range of emotion with great characters in a story that delivers a level of satisfaction that’s rare in most gay novels. Everyone loves this book and I think you will too.
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RAGE monthly | JULY 2010
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