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The Current
From the author of THE NAVIGATORS and LODESTAR comes this novel of gay men discovering previously unknown possibilities and actualizing a new way of life in San Francisco during the 1970's. During little more than a decade between the Stonewall Riots and the arrival of AIDS in New York and San Francisco, gay male culture emerged from the shadows, reinventing itself for all the world to see and establishing its communities, traditions, and institutions. Riding on this unprecedented historical current, a new type of gay man came of age. These were men who were unapologetically loved other men, but at the same time they were sons, brothers, cousins, uncles, co-workers and friends--not the misfits, freaks and weirdos of stereotype but unmistakable as everyday individuals.
Cooper, a Jewish bodybuilder from New York, arrives in San Francisco in the fall of 1973 to enter college. He takes to the new sociocultural reality like a hatchling salmon reaching open water for the first time. Farm boy Griffin, an aspiring concert pianist and refugee from backwoods superstition and prejudice, can barely bring himself to dip so much as a toe into the stream that seemed to threaten as much as it promises. THE CURRENT locates these two in their social and historical contexts and follows their journeys as they explore the hitherto unimaginable opportunities unfolding around them, fight to build the lives they dream of, and in the process discover their destinies.
Cooper, a Jewish bodybuilder from New York, arrives in San Francisco in the fall of 1973 to enter college. He takes to the new sociocultural reality like a hatchling salmon reaching open water for the first time. Farm boy Griffin, an aspiring concert pianist and refugee from backwoods superstition and prejudice, can barely bring himself to dip so much as a toe into the stream that seemed to threaten as much as it promises. THE CURRENT locates these two in their social and historical contexts and follows their journeys as they explore the hitherto unimaginable opportunities unfolding around them, fight to build the lives they dream of, and in the process discover their destinies.
458 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 29, 2014
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March 3, 2017
Some authors create books that I react to as if they were drugs. I'm afraid I'm hooked. The Current has the rich density, compelling ideas, and evocative detail that appealed to me in The Navigators and Loadstar, but with central characters who are distinctly different. So their lives - and (in this universe, therefore) the lives of their families are different. We also have focus in a different time period - mostly the 1970s. But there's the same invitation to the reader to grasp the big ideas and draw conclusions. Books that I enjoy often do this. Maybe it's real, maybe it's fantastic - either way I enjoyed being in the middle of the epic.
Displaying 1 of 1 review