A Small Gathering of Bones (Bluestreak) - Softcover

Powell, Patricia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807083674 ISBN 13: 9780807083673

Publisher: Beacon Press, 2003

Synopsis

It's 1978, and Dale Singleton is becoming alarmed as his friend, Ian Kaysen, is afflicted with a mysterious and seemingly untreatable illness characterized by pneumonia, lesions, and dementia. This novel of the first days of AIDS is viscerally affecting, as it conveys the shocked puzzlement of those troubled by Ian's condition while simultaneously documenting Jamaican society's struggle to accept the dignity of gay love. Dale's world collapses, yet his experience of being gay in a middle-class culture circumscribed by church, family, and compulsory heterosexuality is hauntingly memorable-and familiar.

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About this title

About the Author:

Patricia Powell is the author of Me Dying Trial, The Pagoda, and a forthcoming novel, The Good Life. Her awards include the Bruce Rossley Literary Award, the Ferro-Grumley Award for Fiction, and the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award. Powell has taught creative writing at Harvard University, Wellesley College, and the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Currently she is Martin Luther King Visiting Professor at MIT. Powell lives in
Watertown, Massachusetts.

From Library Journal:

The struggle to define oneself and one's relationship with one's surroundings and to deal with the complexities of love as well as the fears of illness and death are dramatically illustrated in this novel. Set in Jamaica in 1978 and relayed in the lyrical cadences of island English (which becomes progressively less obtrusive), Powell's second work focuses on Dale, a young gay man who is attempting to deal with a world that seems to be crashing down around him. A long-term relationship begins to disintegrate, while a friend, whose mother disowned him when he came out (a rejection he stubbornly denies), comes down with a mysterious, seemingly untreatable illness. As Dale becomes more and more aware of the hypocrisy of his neighbors, he is torn between hope and despair, jealousy and yearning, and his very faith is threatened. His struggles reflect those we all face at some point. Deserving of a wide audience, this is essential for collections of Caribbean fiction and a good choice for metropolitan libraries serving a diverse clientele.
David W. Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersburg, Fla.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Beacon Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0807083674
• ISBN 13: 9780807083673
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 144