Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir

Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir

This “tender and lyrical” memoir (New York Times Book Review) remains one of the most compelling documents of the AIDS era - a “searing, shattering, ultimately hope inspiring account of a great love story” (San Francisco Examiner). A National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and the winner of the PEN Center West literary award. "Why don't you write about this? Nobody else does." These words, from one of the doctors treating Monette's lover Roger Horwitz during his well-fought but losing battle with AIDS, prompted this book. Purged of the tendency toward jeremiad he displayed in Love Alone ( LJ 4/1/88), poems written during the last months of Rog's life, Monette has fused "unresolved rage" with eloquence to produce a gripping, accessible, and essential book. Monette captures the everyday minutiae and roller coaster emotions of living with AIDS, taking us from his first personal exposure to the epidemic via an old friend, through the 19 months between Rog's diagnosis and death. Monette's solipsistic dedication to a community of prosperous, white gay men can be annoying, but the book's strength is that it is always annoyingly, believably real. BOMC alternate.Rob Schmieder, Boston Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.