num_pages: 176
description: DOG DAYS, WHITE NIGHTS which David says is "half a travel book", is a collection of essays on a variety of subjects: place, books, music, gay life, AIDS. It ranges in subject matter from prehistoric furniture and sexy young men in the Orkney Islands to puffins and shipwrecks in the Scillies; from Benjamin Britten to gay book reviewers; from casual sexual encounters to the "AIDS-is-the-best-thing-that-happened-to-me" brigade; from DON GIOVANNI as an AIDS metaphor to a consideration of Hana Mandlikova's shoes. Through much of it is an evocation of a vanished past - the Isle of Skye as it used to be, long-lost lovers, winters before global warming, "vanishing me," as David Rees says - it is not all nostalgia. More genial and less angry than LETTERS TO DOROTHY, the new collection of essays is also a witty and thorough assessment of some of the pleasures and pains that one gay man with the AIDS virus is experiencing now.
language: English
title: Dog Days: White Nights
titlecomplete: Dog Days: White Nights
ratings_count: 2
publisher: Third House (Publishers)