Getting Over Homer - Hardcover

O'Donnell, Mark

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679445900 ISBN 13: 9780679445906

Publisher: Knopf, 1996

Synopsis

"Wise and forgiving . . . tough-minded and tender-hearted" (The New York Times), this delicious "coming of middle age" novel takes a lyrical, winsome, and genuinely side-splitting look at the heartbreak, aging, the search for home, and the madness of love between two mismatched men. "A stylish mix of humorous irony and realistic detail."--San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

nd forgiving . . . tough-minded and tender-hearted" (The New York Times), this delicious "coming of middle age" novel takes a lyrical, winsome, and genuinely side-splitting look at the heartbreak, aging, the search for home, and the madness of love between two mismatched men. "A stylish mix of humorous irony and realistic detail."--San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle.<br><br><br><i>From the Trade Paperback edition.</i>

Reviews

Playwright and humorist O'Donnell's first novel is a wit-saturated tale of coming out, coming-of-age, come-downs and coming around about love. "Blue" Monahan's search for his true mate in gay Manhattan sparks two successive flames, both of which burn out. His first, Homer, an ambitious celebrity party planner, takes him among the high rollers and Fire Island sophisticates before the pair abruptly break up. On the rebound with the younger, naive Teddy, Blue again discovers the unpredictable behavior of the human heart. O'Donnell (Vertigo Park) saddles Blue with an identical twin who is a famous sitcom actor and with the misfortune of having written a cheesy hit ballad as a kid. Homer is a less than credible figure of obsession, but O'Donnell captures his mercurially untrustworthy charm. Similarly, his style works best when rendering repartee or when relating the antics of Blue's family and friends, such as the sardonically upright Lloyd, who calls Homer "either Cute Man Made or time-released trouble." Blue's a wistful fool for love, and the narrative is awash in one-liners and self-conscious sentimentality. In the end, Blue's punning, pop-cult wiseacreage somewhat flattens the story line, as his amorous highs don't sound all that different from his heartbroken lows.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A loopy, rather wonderful fiction debut by O'Donnell, whose Vertigo Park and Other Tall Tales (1993) Kirkus called silly/funny ``with verve of steel.'' For all his puns and wordplay, O'Donnell still keeps that steel verve as an understructure to his japes. And he has a golden ear for capturing the tones of New York's gay culture. The story starts in Catholic Cleveland with the birth of Blue and Red Monahan, identical twins, their real names Hans Christian and Robert Louis. Mother Monahan keeps a crucifix in every room of the house, like a fire extinguisher. And the boys are up to their necks in siblings, whose marriages and careers we follow sporadically throughout the novel. Mostly, though, the story's about Blue, now a Manhattan songwriter, who discovers early on that he has a talent for writing tunes and lyrics: as an adolescent, he has a hit song, ``Love Is the Answer.'' (He later finds that life is the answer and love the question.) Red falls into a hit television show and becomes immensely famous, while Blue's Homeric musical Odyssey folds after a week off-off-off-Broadway. The plot repeatedly returns to Blue's two heartbreaking, failed love affairs, played out against the backgrounds of gay life on Fire Island and the Pines, in the Village, and at uptown penthouses. Blue's vulnerable heart, his grief and anger for his lost loves Homer and Teddy, is explored with great clarity, and you don't have to be gay to experience these losses with him. In the end, both Homer and Teddy abandon him with a cruelty stemming from their own shortcomings. Meanwhile, his friends start falling off into oblivion, many with AIDS, in a series of farewell scenes handled with much skill. Blue, chastened by love and loss, grows up. Universal feelings persuasively explored. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0679445900
• ISBN 13: 9780679445906
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 193