Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1671894 in Books
• Published on: 1991-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 181 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Barnett's first book is a skillful, sad and sometimes stoic look at gay and lesbian love in six short stories. Haunted by AIDS and by the difficulty of connecting romantically even under the best of circumstances, his characters are perplexed realists doing battle with unreasonable fears and towering problems. Often isolated or adrift, they seek to understand the incomprehensible. A young man's fractured family and dim past in "Snapshot" lead him to yearn for love without fully grasping the extent of his need, so that "to want and want and want, and not to know that you are wanting, means that you are never sure of anything." In "The Body and Its Seasons," a disillusioned student searches for solace in sex, concluding, " 'This intimacy thing is highly overrated.' " Barnett's willingness to venture into explosively emotional terrain with empathy, candor and balance is perhaps best revealed in his stunning "The Times As It Knows Us," where men sharing a summerhouse appear to have created family within the gay community--yet even this proves illusory. Though occasionally overcrowded with allusions to art, architecture and culture, the book incisively reveals that in our hearts and souls, as well as our bodies, lie the real dangers.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

The best book I read last year
I was very impressed with the quality of writing in this book, and the extraordinary compassion of the author that is evident even in the less likeable characters.The metaphors in the book are richly woven into the stories, especially the two dealing with the friends from the Jesuit college whose lives are profoundly affected by their relationships. I hope this book gets a wider reading public than gay men as several themes explored in the book- illness, breast cancer, finding the father figure, sexuality and sensuality, loss of traditional spirituality- are issues facing many men and women in society. I was distressed to learn that Mr Barnett himself had died of AIDS shortly after the book was published. He was a very gifted writer of perception and depth, and I mourn this loss to the literary world.

Sensitive and Powerful!
A most sensitive and yet powerful collection of short stories with 'The Body...' being the best of the lot. With this expressive power how come we didn't hear more from (and on) this VERY talented writer ???

The best work of American fiction from the AIDS pandemic
Put simply, Barnett's "The Body and Its Dangers" is the best work of American fiction to come out of the AIDS pandemic--its beautiful prose, its rich and fierce vision. The long story "The 'Times' As It Knows Us" alludes to and is finally equal to Joyce's "The Dead": it's a story as large as the complexities and sorrows it describes.