Any Kind of Luck

by William Jack Sibley

Manhattan hand model Clu Latimore, along with his lover Chris, returns to his hometown, where he is faced with a variety of dilemmas, from his dying mother and her impending marriage to a Mexican-American evangelist to a production of "Agamemnon--the Musical." Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

Genres: LGBT, Gay Fiction, Gay, Fiction, Queer

288 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2001

About the author

Award-winning William Jack Sibley is a fifth generation Texas rancher and a versatile writer whose work has spanned from the likes of writing dialogue for television’s Guiding Light to serving as a contributing editor at Andy Warhol’s Interview Magazine, to seeing his plays produced off-Broadway and regionally. Sibley is the author of a dozen screenplays, nine stage plays, and three novels (Any Kind of Luck, Sighs Too Deep For Words, and Here We Go Loop De Loop).

Sibley’s previous works have won the National Indie Excellence Book Award and USA Best Book Award while succeeding as a finalist in the Lambda Literary Award, Foreword Reviews Book of the Year, and more. Sibley currently is the Secretary of the Texas Institute of Letters, as well as a member of The Dramatist Guild and the Writers Guild of America. He lives in San Antonio. For more, visit www.williamjacksibley.com.

Reviews

[Jax · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was expecting a light comedic romp and I got much more. Laughs? Sure. Colorful characters and crazy situations? Check and check. But there's a lot of substance couched in this southern family farce. Sibley has lots of smart things to say, not only about being gay (and being gay in a southern small town), but about judging family and others based on past experiences or preset notions and how that ultimately shrinks your world and affects your own happiness. Who's really the small-minded one when we make assumptions about others? I had a little niggle regarding the course of the romance portion of the book, but overall I highly recommend this and his other book, Sighs Too Deep for Words.

[Ashli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious! An off the wall story about a man and his boyfriend moving back to small town Texas, after being accustomed to life in New York City, to take care of his dying mother. The situations he encounters with prejudices, old friends and family are laughable and enlightening.

Plus, Justin's uncle wrote it so it's personal to me.

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fun and lively story about a gay guy from Texas who escaped to NYC but has to return. He faces many of his own issues with coming "home", and it fun while at the same time very close to the "truth". As an ex-Texan, I could relate and thoroughly enjoyed this book!

['Nathan Burgoine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Normally, when I read gay fiction, I get frustrated by the plethora of perfect-looking single men with adequately successful lives bemoaning the tiny imperfections that plague them. When a perfectly built jock-stud with a long string of one-night-stands suddenly wakes up one day and says, "Gosh, I wish I had a true love," I have a hard time gathering much empathy.

This isn't one of those stories.

Here's the deal. Moderately-successful Hand-model Clu Latimore lives on Christopher street in Manhattan with his eight-year-long lover Chris, the Latin teacher. Though Clu has a lot of internal monologue about how he can't figure out why Chris, such an attractive man, is still with him, they're a good, solid couple.

Clu gets called home - to Grit, Texas - when his mother's impending death to cancer looms. And though the plot from there really shines with a lot of really odd bits and pieces (a tex-mex musical version of Agamemnon, a pack of breeding Chihuahuas, his brother digging for buried treasure, his sister's umpteenth attempt at being pregnant, and a country that just screams hick and angry), it's the characters that keep this one going.

Clu is alternately enjoyable and frustrating. Anyone with emotional baggage from their family can easily empathise with the guy's situation, but you want to smack him over the head every time he takes a well-meaning comment someone else made and turns it into an impromptu "This is why what you said is homophobic" seminar. Clu's relationship with Chris takes a path I really didn't expect, and there's a betrayal that made me ill, but - let's face it - read quite true.

I guess the word "plausible" doesn't sound like it should belong in a tale that includes a tex-mex musical Agamemmnon, but honestly, I can't find a better word to describe the characters nor the emotional reactions. I'll watch out for Sibley in the future.

[Michelle Hannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is so much fun. Clu and his partner, Chris, move from NYC to his rural Texas hometown to be with Clu’s dying mother. It was everything I expected, and yet so much caught me by surprise. I love that this book is full of irreverent humor, quirky characters that remind me of people I love, and eccentric family dynamic.