Review: Passionate, sometimes painful, funny, and very very real.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 07 14, 2012
When Philip Higgins, the author of "Man*hattan" dropped by the gay-lit forum on AfterElton to give notice of his new novel, he described it as "a fluffy yarn with some brains."  No, dear, fluffy it isn't. Brains, for sure, and a great deal of vivid, good, emotion-packed writing. I expected something light and amusing--a gay romance with some magical realism.  But, no, really. I think Mr. Higgins is under-estimating the punch of both his story and his writing skills.This book shows us a few months in the life of Michael Dearborn, in some ways the archetype of the thirty-something gay men in Manhattan today. Still cute enough to be nearly twinks; but old enough to be worried. He and his friends are caught up in the social and chemical whirl of twenty-first century gay New York; only Michael has recently stumbled after an intense romance of six months crashed and burned. Possibly through his own fault. He is having a hard time recovering, in spite of the gentle care his friends take of him. When they're not torturing him.This book has very funny moments; but it is also terribly painful, because Higgins manages to cut through the giddy life of these attractive guys and reveal the lonely, loving, one-step-from-desperate men they are. There is not one easy thing in this book, and none of the expected romantic angles, from the gorgeous medical student to the life-long friend who suddenly seems like "the one," pans out the way they would in a "normal" romance novel.Higgins does not give Michael Dearborn a free pass to a happy ending. But he does steer Michael on an odyssey through his own emotional reality that ultimately points him toward the possibility of a romantic sunset.This is not the kind of book that the typical female m/m romance reader is going to like. Its humor is too gritty and its writing is too Proustian in its detail. But, while I didn't always feel happy while reading Higgins' first novel, I ultimately embraced Michael as a character living a life that resonated with my own in a thousand strange little ways.  Read this book. It's worth the effort.