Getting off Clean

A coming-of-age debut novel movingly limns young gay love in the racially charged setting of a Massachusetts small town. High-school senior Eric Fitzpatrick is bright, college-bound, and different from his working-class Irish-Italian family and peers. Not just intellectually but emotionally different--he's a notorious weeper, and also, as he's beginning to realize, gay. Just before the school year starts, he meets Brooks Francis Tremont, a rich, sophisticated, black student at snotty St. Banners, a nearby boarding school. The two young men, initially wary--class is as much a problem for them as race--are increasingly drawn to each other and soon sexually involved. As the relationship continues, Eric, a loving son and brother, must also cope with varying crises that involve his ailing grandmother, his Down's syndrome younger sister, and his older sister, now pregnant but unmarried. His relationship with Brooks is further tried by the racism that breaks out when a young girl is found murdered. The townspeople blame inner-city blacks and Puerto Ricans: A young Hispanic is beaten to death, riots break out, and Brooks inevitably gets caught up in it all. Never an entirely credible character, he drops out of school when the rich aunt who has been his guardian dies, and he makes plans to live in Paris. Despite his love for Brooks, Eric is still the straight arrow, the local hero with a Yale scholarship, who doesn't want his family to know about his sexuality and who won't run off to Paris. A melodramatic incident at graduation, however, forces him to ``come out'' at last, hurting his family but providing a requisite (if flat) conclusion. Despite a few schematic blips, a new voice that is both strong and true. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Murphy's debut is an extraordinary tale of young, forbidden love worth reading for both its topical matter and its style. In the suburban town of West Mendhem, Massachusetts, gay, townie, over-achieving high school senior Eric Fitzpatrick lives with his pregnant, unmarried older sister; a Down Syndrome younger one; their excitable mother and placid father; and an Old World grandmother. He falls in love with rich, unstable, black Brooks Tremont, a rebellious student at the local private academy. As a local murder causes racial strife to erupt between West Mendhem and a neighboring Latino community, Eric is forced to confront the narrowness of his upbringing. This is an old story?readers will recognize everyone from Eric's two hippie friends to the Italian aunties?but in Murphy's hands it is brilliantly told, with economy of language and a sure hand. Murphy is more than a writer to watch, he is one to read now. Highly recommended.?Harold Augenbraum, Mercantile Lib., New York
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.