Halfway Home

by Paul Monette

Weakened by AIDS, artist Tom Ahaheen retreats to a remote California beach to come to terms with his illness and his life, until his estranged brother, Brian, comes back into his life. By the author of Afterlife. Reprint.

Genres: Fiction, LGBT, Gay Fiction, Gay, Queer, Romance, M M Romance

262 pages, Paperback

First published March 27, 1991

About the author

Online Guide to Paul Monette's papers at UCLA:
http://findaid.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/...

In novels, poetry, and a memoir, Paul Monette wrote about gay men striving to fashion personal identities and, later, coping with the loss of a lover to AIDS.

Monette was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1945. He was educated at prestigious schools in New England: Phillips Andover Academy and Yale University, where he received his B.A. in 1967. He began his prolific writing career soon after graduating from Yale. For eight years, he wrote poetry exclusively.

After coming out in his late twenties, he met Roger Horwitz, who was to be his lover for over twenty years. Also during his late twenties, he grew disillusioned with poetry and shifted his interest to the novel, not to return to poetry until the 1980s.

In 1977, Monette and Horwitz moved to Los Angeles. Once in Hollywood, Monette wrote a number of screenplays that, though never produced, provided him the means to be a writer. Monette published four novels between 1978 and 1982. These novels were enormously successful and established his career as a writer of popular fiction. He also wrote several novelizations of films.

Monette's life changed dramatically when Roger Horwitz was diagnosed with AIDS in the early 1980s. After Horwitz's death in 1986, Monette wrote extensively about the years of their battles with AIDS (Borrowed Time, 1988) and how he himself coped with losing a lover to AIDS (Love Alone, 1988). These works are two of the most powerful accounts written about AIDS thus far.

Their publication catapulted Monette into the national arena as a spokesperson for AIDS. Along with fellow writer Larry Kramer, he emerged as one of the most familiar and outspoken AIDS activists of our time. Since very few out gay men have had the opportunity to address national issues in mainstream venues at any previous time in U.S. history, Monette's high-visibility profile was one of his most significant achievements. He went on to write two important novels about AIDS, Afterlife (1990) and Halfway Home (1991). He himself died of AIDS-related complications in 1995.

In his fiction, Monette unabashedly depicts gay men who strive to fashion personal identities that lead them to love, friendship, and self-fulfillment. His early novels generally begin where most coming-out novels end; his protagonists have already come to terms with their sexuality long before the novels' projected time frames. Monette has his characters negotiate family relations, societal expectations, and personal desires in light of their decisions to lead lives as openly gay men.

Two major motifs emerge in these novels: the spark of gay male relations and the dynamic alternative family structures that gay men create for themselves within a homophobic society. These themes are placed in literary forms that rely on the structures of romance, melodrama, and fantasy.

Monette's finest novel, Afterlife, combines the elements of traditional comedy and the resistance novel; it is the first gay novel written about AIDS that fuses personal love interests with political activism.

Monette's harrowing collection of deeply personal poems, Love Alone: 18 Elegies for Rog, conveys both the horrors of AIDS and the inconsolable pain of love lost. The elegies are an invaluable companion to Borrowed Time.

Before the publication and success of his memoir, Becoming a Man, it seemed inevitable that Monette would be remembered most for his writings on AIDS. Becoming a Man, however, focuses on the dilemmas of growing up gay. It provides at once an unsparing account of the nightmare of the closet and a moving and often humorous depiction of the struggle to come out. Becoming a Man won the 1992 National Book Award for nonfiction, a historical moment in the history

Reviews

[Ije the Devourer of Books · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Home is the place you get to, not the place you came from.”


Well this was brilliant!!

But I am not surprised because it was written by a man who lived a courageous and brilliant life. A champion!

This book for me is the best of Paul Monette's writing that I have read so far. It is even better than his memoirs because the writing and experiences from his memoirs can be found here in the lives of his very real characters.

Paul Monette's fiction and his non-fiction testify about love between men and the way in which this love endures, supports and brings life. Not just erotic love but also fraternal love and the love between friends. His writing also testifies about the challenges of all kinds of love, of growing up gay, of living in a society which worships the fittest and the whitest, and worships the strong man, the successful man and in this worship neglects and derides those do not fit in or who fail to reach those so called emblems of societal recognition or success.

In this story Paul Monette goes beyond the love of two men to explore the wider family and the love of friends. Tom Sheehan has AIDS is and slowly, slowy dying. He has abandoned the theatre he used to manage and left that work to his friend Mona and he is staying in a beach house owned by his friend Gray.

Tom is coming to terms with the deaths of so many of his friends and his own ill health, but Tom also has a history of hurt from his childhood and mourns the loss of what he would have liked his childhood to have been. The pain inflicted on him by his brother and the rejection from his mother and judgement and violence from his father have left their shadows in Tom's life. Now as he grapples with ill health he relies on the love and support of friends but he constantly lives under the shadows and pain of the past.

But things happen and Tom's brother comes back into his life in a most surprising way and not just his brother, but his nephew and sister in law. At the same time love finds its way back into Tom's life, both the love of friends and a new romantic love. Both Tom and his brother find that they have to learn to love anew and come to terms with their childhood and their lives and the things that have happened to bring them to this point in their lives.

It is a time of great change and time of truth for both of them as the past is revisited and the truth of their lives in revealed.

Tom comes to see that he is wrong about the so called gilded life of entitlement his heterosexual brother has been granted. It isn't as easy and as privileged as he thought. Tom begins to see that beneath the golden sheen of his brother's life is full of cracks and blemishes, dishonesty and violence. His brother lives with the same kind of blemishes that now appear on Tom's skin as he battles the virus.

Tom also begins to see the beauty that is in his own relationships and the way in which his own life has brought him love and joy. He begins to realise that it is he who is blessed and this his honest life has been life giving and that he is stronger than he thought.

As he battles with his health he finds strength as he begins to think through and come to terms with the hurts of his childhood and opens himself to his brother and his new lover. Of course this doesn't mean that things are all neatly resolved because they aren't. The story doesn't try to resolve feelings and events but instead it journeys through them. Tom relives his hurts but he comes to see that the nice 'nuclear family' of man, wife, children is not all it is cracked up to be and this his own family of Gray and Mona is just as valid and loving.

I enjoyed this. I had a wonderful childhood myself but I am often nonplussed by people who look at the family as the be all and end all. I think real family includes blood relations and non blood relations. I also think family can be a place of great joy but also great pain and fear and I enjoyed reading this because as Tom reflects and thinks of his past it seems as if he comes to a similar realisation.

Tom also realises that life is precious and to be appreciated and that he should live fully in the time left.

This story is just so beautifully written. Paul Monette manages to convey the confusion and emotions of a person who now struggles with AIDS having also struggled through childhood, but this is not a painful story but a triumphant one because of what Tom realises about himself.

The story also reflects Paul Monette's personal experiences: his criticism of the Roman Catholic church and it's position on homosexuality, his experiences of living with Irish people and the bullies of his childhood. The characters in this book are brought up in the Roman Catholic church but this does not bring the young Tom any peace as an adult or any protection from abuse as a child. This haunts him but at the same time as an adult on stage he creates a monologue where he himself is Jesus and in some way portrays the Jesus that he believes in. The Jesus of true liberation, the wounded and broken shepherd and not the triumphalist condemning Jesus of the Roman Catholic instituition and his childhood.

Later it is an ex-Roman Catholic nun who steps into the upheaval and Tom finds it in himself to create peace and some sense of true reconciliation. In this way Paul Monette provides the readers with glimpse of the true compassion and love that can be found in some people of faith, but which is often lacking in the public face of the religious institution.

The author also explores the darkness of family life and so called 'family values' showing that sometimes the inside of family life is dark and painful whilst the outside and what is seen externally is shiny and appears full of light. I enjoyed this because family life can also be a place of great danger and oppression and injustice, but institutions and churches can so often assume that family is best. Love, being cherished, supported and valued is not always automatically found within birth families but it can be found in the families of friends and in other communities.

And of course there are echoes of Paul Monette's own loves in this book. His struggles trying to keep Roger (his first partner) alive and the many tests and hospital visits Roger endured are glimpsed here as Tom and Gray anticipate Tom's declining health and recognise that their first tests in hospital will increase as time goes on.

There is a tribute here to Steven Kolzack (Paul Monette's second partner) and his activism when Tom meets a fellow ACTUP activist in hospital and recalls a protest they were both involved in. Indeed the book is dedicated to Steven Kolzack and in this way recalls the activism that pushed Governments to act and continues to save lives to this day.

Above all the story shows that the love of friends and the care people show for one another crosses the traditional family boundaries and is just as important for life. In an age in which family breakdown is high and in which social isolation is so common it is important to remember this and to value all kinds of relationships and friendships.

Paul Monette's best writing was born out of the furnace of the 1980's AIDS pandemic and his own personal difficulties growing up gay in 1960/70's America. I could see all his own personal experiences reflected in the actions and lives of the characters and this made the story richer for me.

He explores homophobia and neglect within families and he does so without telling but by showing in a most powerful way. Tom's sister in law shows her prejudice and hatred for him even though she is reliant on Tom for shelter. The way in which the author shows her hypocrisy and her short comings was excellent and we get to contrast this with the way in which Tom interacts with his nephew Daniel who shows no judgement at all, only a willingness to live and let live.

This story has a similar feel to Michael Thomas Ford's Full Circle, in that there is a kind of coming to terms or growth, away from the hurts and challenges of the past and an appreciation of the present.

In this story we hear the echoes of Paul Monette's personal story through Tom Shaheen's desire to be a 'man'. To be the kind of man his brother is, one who has his father's love, one who plays all the sports, one who is accepted instead of being left on the margins, brutalised and ignored. Paul Monette eventually found his own way to becoming a man and through the furnace of AIDS became more than a man. In this story Tom Shaheen does so too and comes to terms with his desire to be like his brother and finds a new love and respect in his relationship with his nephew and affirmation and acceptance in his relationship with Gray but he also finds reconciliation and love for his brother and the rift between them begins to heal.

Tom is a multi dimensional character with his own whims, anger and resentments, but also he has courage, passions and love, and all of these emotions overflow in the story. It is just such a meaningful story which touched me and gave me such a fulfilling reading experience. Exquisite!

I knew this book was going to be special and I was right. Paul Monette will always be one of my favourite authors and a real hero. My deep appreciation of this story comes from a deep appreciation of Paul Monette's life and his other writing. This story had so much more meaning for me because I could understand the life of the author. This doesn't always happen because we are not always privileged to understand the authors behind our books. When we have an opportunity to do so, not only is it a privilege it makes for a monumental reading experience and the author becomes a friend and conversation partner and sometimes a hero.

The AIDS pandemic has robbed the world of millions of phenomenal people, men women and children. We can only imagine at what might have been if all these people were still alive today. It is impossible to imagine but I always imagine this when I think of Paul Monette. What might have been if we didn't lose him twenty years ago?

I wonder at this because I love Paul Monette's writing and I wish he had lived, and lived to tell us more stories with such beauty, depth and emotion like this one. The writing was simply beautiful, painting pictures in my mind. The end was lovely and so quietly satisfying.

So I leave this book determined to return to it at some point and thrilled to know a bit more about the life of my hero and the hero of many - Paul Monette.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remembered enjoying this book when it was published in 1991 and now, 18 years later, I enjoyed it again. AIDS affected author Monette's life brutally, annihilating his friends and lovers and eventually himself (he died in 1995.) That first-hand sense of being on the front lines of the crisis rings through quite clearly. It's not a perfect novel, by any means, and there is one plot line in particular that winds up feeling extraordinarily contrived to me but the characterization of protagonist Tom Shaheen rings true to me and brought tears to my eyes again and again. Halfway Home is the story of Shaheen reconciling with a brutal familial past and preparing to lose his battle with AIDS. Heavy stuff, to be sure, but Shaheen is an engaging narrator, wryly aware of his own rage and petulant persistence in the face of hatred & disease. Sweetest of all, however, is the budding love story between Shaheen and his benefactor, Gray Baldwin. Having grown up without any real literary role models for gay male love, I'm still moved by my own capacity to be choked up by gay love stories--and love is definitely at the heart of Halfway Home. As Tom recites at novel's end: "Home is the place you get to, not the place you came from."

[Marla · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the way Paul Monette writes (wrote)and am so happy to learn I haven't read everything in his body of work. I happened to run across this copy of "Halfway Home" in a small book & art shop in Hood River, Oregon last week, and am so glad I did.

This novel is extremely well put together, telling the story of a brother, Tom, -- a very funny guy -- coping with AIDS while also wrestling with childhood memories of family violence at the hands of his father and older brother. Because the story is in Monette's hands, nothing ever gets too horrible, though the plot twists are very realistic and fascinating. Also, he really gets people and how they interact. But if you read it for no other reason, read it for Tom's wicked sense of humor! I laughed out loud many times.

[Manuel Colón · Rating 5 out of 5]

Woof! An absolute page turner, 10/10 would recommend. Lots of twists and turns to keep you engaged.

[Sebastian · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're already familiar with Monette, then (even aside from the subject matter) you can really tell that this is written by a dying man. Only someone with an expiration date would be willing to attach their career to the taboo that's inextricable from this story.

To say less vaguely: I was surprised by the initial mention of incest, further surprised as it proved to be a recurring theme, and then I adapted, but I proceeded to spend much of the book wondering just /who/ this protagonist is. Because Monette's relationship with his brother in real life is detailed in the memoir that came after this, and he makes it sound really good. Not only that, he talks about his brother being disabled. But... well, maybe it's just because he's that good of a writer, or maybe it's the bias of a first-person narrative, but Monette writes about incestuous desire and experience very personally here. I have to imagine that the situation with this protagonist, Tom, and his brother Brian, is a combination of personal fantasies and possibly experiences of other people that Monette knew. With the severe bullying from the brother in particular, it could be partially a matter of wishing that one's abuse had been more concrete and more objectively severe so that others will take it seriously - which is SO common. Like, personally, my first attempts at novels were all about children escaping murderously abusive situations, whereas CPS visited multiple times and found nothing wrong with my family irl.

As for the sexual nature of it, particularly the desire on the protagonist's end... In any case one can't help but read it as a confession of sorts: "This didn't happen to me, but part of me wishes it did."

And frankly I think it's really brave. The older I get, the more I realize how normal these things are. It's taboo because of the abuse and damage that very often comes with acting on it, but the thoughts themselves are fairly common in early sexual development. Especially when you're gay and already have been convinced your feelings are abnormal anyway, etc etc. But Halfway Home is by far the most thorough and honest and casual telling of incestuous feelings I've ever seen outside of just plain porn - with the sexual nature of a relationship between brothers being inextricable from the plot, but also not at all the focus, and certainly not intended to come across as fetish, but /also/ not shrouded in shame either. Monette understands it as a simple taboo like any other, existing independently of the abuse that it's associated with. The main thing that gets me: Despite all the talk of Tom's sexual fantasies about Brian, how ANY thoughts of Brian are basically automatically connected to desire, and how Brian shaped his sexual attraction to this day... it's not until about 7/8ths of the way through that we learn that sex actually /occurred/ between them. Almost like an afterthought. And I admittedly did wonder, at first, just how out of it Monette was when he wrote this - like, if he'd forgotten that 40 pages ago Tom was telling Mona that he's been trying to get a guy who looked like Brian his whole life. But I quickly realized that it's /not/ an afterthought; it's a reveal, and the coercive nature of it is why it's not a conscious thought in previous chapters. Tom compartmentalizes, and this is realistic and nuanced in ways that few other authors would like to admit.

One way that this /isn't/ particularly realistic, meanwhile, is in just how accepting everyone around Tom is of allusions to incest. He can get up on stage and talk about wanting to fuck his brother (while in the persona of Jesus, though funnily enough that's not that relevant) and be recieved VERY positively by a woman who literally works with incest victims. His best friend outright says she /loved/ the incest thing, and he later tells her about his real incestuous desire, and she's just like "yeah me too lol." Even Gray, an otherwise deeply rserved man, seems to have no issue with the obvious sexual overtones of his own lover's complicated relationship with his brother. Basically, this is the final piece of proof I need that this was all a deathbed confession of sorts: Monette wishes that this was the world. He believes (imo, accurately) that this is so utterly common, and he wants everyone to just be honest about it.

...Look at that, I've written several paragraphs all about incest, lol. So, going back to my initial statement about this being written by a dying man, and starting from zero: What's remarkable is that in spite of everything, Monette's writing is still so RICH. I had similar thoughts about Afterlife - how as much as the writing style changed and got stripped back, it's still leagues above so many other writers. Even while frail Monette FELT every little moment and understood its connection to millions of other moments. In a way, this actually feels more like Mrs. Carroll and Long Shot than Afterlife.

Part of that is that very little truly happens in this book, and that what does happen seems to come out of left field. Nothing is a surprise until it is. One moment it's prose and interpersonal drama, and before you know it, Tom is harboring a fugitive. Tom is thinking about life and love and loss and... and then he's killing a mob boss in his living room. And these plot elements, despite technically being the premise that allows everything else to happen, always feel so oddly unrelated to the *emotional* crux of the story.

It's strange, but at worst it's funny. Still, I'll admit that it's probably Monette's one weakness as a writer - by virtue of his talents and inclinations being SO geared to other things. I think Taking Care of Mrs. Carroll accomplished the balance of his style of prose and Actual Plot Elements perfectly, and that both The Long Shot and this book were chasing that high a little bit. The mysteries were fun but just didn't mesh quite AS well. But once again, even at his lowest he's still just so fucking talented.

I know I'm biased - I'm attached to Monette as a person and am going to enjoy any window into his life. But I also think that my attachment is simply inevitable from reading him. And I think that even if this was your introduction to him, you were probably never going to like a book where the protagonist has AIDS if you didn't come away feeling you'd read something of value.

[Nick Artrip · Rating 3 out of 5]

“This outcry of ours—so much lost, so much yet to be taken—was something a man could only raise with his own blood. Beyond what the fathers couldn’t tell us, beyond desire, we made a common noise at last, high above the blank indifferent sean. Brian would leave and I would die—all of this would happen. This crying in each other’s arms was something we’d won the right to, by reason of pain and fear of time. We wept to be men—my brother the same as I, and I the same as my brother.”

I pulled another title from my TBR list and this time I randomly selected Halfway Home by Paul Monette. This is the first work I’ve read by Monette and to be quite, I don’t actually remember purchasing it but I’m glad that I did. Penniless and weakened by AIDS, performance artist Tom Shaheen retreats to a run-down house on Malibu Beach to take stock of his life and contemplate the illness that has so thoroughly ravaged him. His isolation his interrupted when his estranged brother Brian, the tormentor of his youth, comes barrelling back into his life trying to outrun problems of his own making.

I have to say, based on the plot synopsis, I wasn’t expecting what followed when I actually started reading this book. There was one particular plot twist that forced me to pause and ask myself if I had somehow inadvertently stumbled into an episode of Knots Landing. Although (thankfully? Regrettably?) this feeling didn’t last for last long, Halfway Home continued to surprise me at nearly every turn in one way or another. There are some very memorable characters in this book! Aside from Tom, the fantastic protagonist, we also get these great characters like Gray’s Aunt Foo, Merle and Mona (with all of her Daphne drama!) The novel even has an element of romance and it really tugged at my heart.

Through Tom and Brian, Monette dives into the all of the complications of brotherhood. The anger, the resentment, the hurt. There’s a lot of trauma to unpack in this book, a lot of injustice that demands your attention and sympathy, but the story is never mired in misery. Tom may be cynical, and deservedly so, but Halfway Home manages to balance itself with hope and humor. The more sensational elements of the story (the trouble that Brian gets himself into) were fun to read, but Tom’s journey toward peace in his relationship with his brother and his musings on mortality are what made this book a rewarding read.

[Evan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book because Borrowed Time is one of my favourite books and Monette's writing in Borrowed Time is the most beautiful writing about love that I have read. So if you have not read Monette yet, then please read that first.

Halfway Home, as fiction, doesn't quite meet this standard, but I didn't expect it to. But Monette still manages an incredibly engrossing and unique story. Considering how tropey a lot of modern queer fiction tends to be, it surprises me how well Monette, writing 30 years ago, manages to avoid these tropes.

Despite this being a story about a man who is dying of AIDS, the story isn't about AIDS or even his journey with the disease. It's about how the closet, trauma and AIDS (in the 80s/90s), often delays the development of gay relationships. Despite many previous partners, the protaganist hasn't felt love until he's dying in his 40s. And this can only come about once he addresses his brother and their family trauma.

It's a small story within the larger context of Tom's diagnosis and convalescence. It's not about his death, but a few weeks of his life when he is sick and tired, but can still live his life. This kind of focus pulls us away from the statistics of the AIDS crisis and into the lives of people who were experiencing it. Focusing on their lives rather than their deaths, reminding us that life continued, though complicated by the disease. That real people were dealing with this, and what that experience felt like.

Much of media's portrayal of AIDS is the last week or two of life. Often because this is when people finally told the public or their families of their diagnosis. But AIDS is a slow disease and one that needs to be told in its entirity. Stories such as this, well informed by Monette's real experiences, are a rare and important part of queer history.

Having said all that, there is a storyline in the book that focuses on Tom's sexual desire for his brother. This is later explained as partly sexual trauma as he is seemingly raped by him as a teenager before they begin a weeks-long sexual tryst of "a couple dozen blowjobs". It just felt unrealistic in its depiction and its resolution and was also just icky. I wouldn't have a problem with icky, but I didn't see the purpose of the incest and it really felt out of place.

[Bethany Hall · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is the story of Tom, diagnosed with AIDS, finding refuge in a California beach house until his troubled brother Brian shows up, bringing danger and family tensions with him. It's a book about love, conflict, and the struggle for reconciliation in the face of life-threatening illness.

While some of the language in this book has not aged well, this is from a different time period. There was a lot I loved about this one. The Miss Jesus scenes had me laughing out loud while at a restaurant by myself. The love of Gray and Tom. Daniel. Such a sweet boy. The attitudes of people, yikes. The final showdown. The call out of the abuse in the Catholic Church was before its time. The incestuous commentary also was not my favorite, but I can understand its use in the context of this book. Again, from a different time period.

Paul Monette remains to me an incredibly gifted writer, all at once satirical and angry, yet hopeful and loving. His books are always full of gorgeous prose. I would recommend Afterlife over this one, but I’m still glad I was able to read another novel by him.

[Blue Le Berre · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel is about a man, dying of AIDS, who comes to terms with his childhood traumas and with his brother.
He is full of anger and frustration both because of what happened to him when he was a child and about the fatality of his sickness - eventually he finds a sort of peace along the way of this journey. But to read about his trauma and his nearing end - well it's tragic and I deeply felt for him as I was reading... Gray was a fantastic character and probably one of my favorites and, while reading from his POV was sometimes tiring because of all the cynicism, Tom was character whom you cannot help but care about.

[Andrés Ordorica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Monette’s novel is utterly moving. Immediately the reader knows that the AIDS stricken protagonist, Tom, is in his final months of life. But the novel takes a quick turn when Tom is tasked with helping his estranged brother and family escape imminent threats from his involvement in construction-business racketeering. The novel is luminescent, humorous, deeply moving, and a rich portrayal of a fully fledged life against the backdrop of deep prejudice and the horrors of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s to early 1990s. Political, pointed, and poignant, this was truly a treasure trove find in one of my favourite bookshops in the world.

[George Arees · Rating 4 out of 5]

The beginning of the book was somewhat confusing. However, the book improved as I continued to read that it was a page turner. The book is fiction, yet it had some reality that so many people endured in the years as AIDS was a death sentence. Therefore, there was little hope as thus was before today's meds were being researched and created. The book was written in 1991 so it may be more relevant to those us who lived through that crisis. The reading of the book was worthwhile, and I enjoyed Monette's twists and turns of the plot.

[Gregory · Rating 4 out of 5]

There’s an awful lot going on in this book. Perched upon a Californian coastal cliff, hiding away in a crumbling beach house whose history maintains its rickety frame, a cast of characters come together and what we end up with is a great tide of emotions washing through the rooms.

Illness is a constant theme but not the story’s driver. Life continues in spite of the illness, and abuse, revenge, retribution, family, friendship and love drive the narrative. Somehow all these elements create a whole that is moving and important.

[Yooperprof · Rating 2 out of 5]

About a third of the way through, the novel takes a completely unexpected lurch that took me completely by surprise. I thought that it was a terrible plot turn, and for me the novel recovered from it. But obviously many many people disagree with me.

[Ellie Cripps · Rating 4 out of 5]

A real page turner, super engaging and well written. The characters felt exciting to hear more about and, for the most part, realistic. Glad I grabbed it spontaneously and finally got around to reading it.

[Mr Egg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tellement beau. Je l'avais lu il y a de cela des années quand j'avais autour de 14 ans. Il fût innouable, j'en ai meme rêvé. La mémoire du titre vient tout juste de me revenir et je pense le relire éventuellement

[Krainfo · Rating 5 out of 5]

A riveting view of a man with nothing more to lose living on the edge.

[Richard Schwartz]

A different era. The PLOT is in the forefront. It is like finding melody in modern music.

[Emily · Rating 1 out of 5]

For most of the book I was just sort of bored, but then towards the end I started to actively dislike it. This is basically a domestic fiction/soap opera, but where the main character happens to be a gay man dying of AIDS. That's not a bad plot necessarily, but it's not the one I personally wanted. There were also just a lot of odd twists and things, mainly with the brother's plot. It's like a mob storyline...I don't know, it seemed like an odd choice for this type of story. I also didn't really like the way it dealt with incest throughout, for most of the book it just felt like a strange element to include, but then at the end it made some decisions I really hated. Like just in general I feel like this book was a lot of really odd choices.

[Carlos Mock · Rating 4 out of 5]

Halfway Home by Paul Monette

It's 1991 and Thomas Francis Shaheen (Tom) is living with Kaposi Sarcoma, a lethal complication (at the time) from HIV/AIDS. He has retired to die at the beach house owned by Graham Cole Baldwin (Gray) of the Baldwin family who owned most of California from Malibu to Santa Monica. There Tom meets Mona McMahon (Mona) and alongside Gray, they become a family.

Growing up as a child, Tom was abused by his father and brother. "I'm an only child." was Tom's mantra.

One day, out of the blue, Tom's abusive brother, Brian, walks into his life. Amazingly, Brian is now more accepting of Tom's lifestyle and demonstrates affection for his younger brother.

After Brian leaves, there are news hat Brian and his family have been killed. It turns out that Brian was involved in a corruption case with his construction company's partner, Jerry Curran (Jerry). Brian turns on Jerry and Jerry burns out Brian's house. But Brian and his family had escaped alive.

Brian reappears back in Tom's house with his wife, Susan, and son, Daniel. Escaping from Jerry, they are being protected by the FBI. Brian is testifying against Jerry, in exchange for a plea deal with minimal jail time. For the first time in his life, Brian needs Tom's help.

And help is what Brian gets. Brian has become a beaten man. In his bitter wife, Susan, and sensitive son, Daniel, Tom can see the pain of his own past. Brian must help his brother, while he deals with a new love relationship with Gray. To do so, he enlists Kathleen Towney, an ex-nun who runs the women's shelter and the gay and lesbian friends who have nurtured him.

Tom has to mend his own fences and heal wounds that had never closed. The book ends with Tom finding a way back to the theater to perform his signature piece, Miss Jesus, as a metaphor of opening himself to the love that may heal him....

The book is narrated from the first person point of view. It takes you back to the days of the plague and it's a beautiful story of love and redemption. It is a story that tries to find meaning to the madness of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. It reads in a day or two. However, for those of us who lived the epidemic, it can open old wounds...

[James Garman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paul Monette's book is about a character struggling with AIDS during the 1980's. In addition to his AIDS diagnosis, he is struggling with his background of estrangement from his entire family. He has also not found it easy to love and be loved and has been even more constricted by the fact that so many of his friends have died.

He is now living in a beach house outside of Los Angeles owned by the Baldwin family. The last youngest member of that family is a guy named Gray who has spend years just tending the old homestead for his aunt, who at 91, is wondering why she is still alive and so healthy.

Suddenly, however, something happens and his brother's family descends upon his little haven. How will he handle this? Will he make peace with the past? Those questions are, at heart what the whole book is about. It is a very interesting read, indeed.

[Jack · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really lesser Monette, alas. His fiction is often less compelling than his memoirs and reality-based writing. This tells the story of two brothers, one seriously ill with AIDS, the other in trouble with federal agents over tax evasion, and how they both end up, with loved ones and various friends, in a slightly decrepit seaside mansion in Malibu. Storms and sexual intrigue, the rock star next door, drag performance art - it's more of a gay soap opera than the TV series "Looking" was.

It's all very Gothic, with confessions of ancient wrongs and a seriously misguided thriller ending. Monette is a gifted writer, so it sails along enjoyably enough, but when it goes off the cliff, there's no hope.

Alas.

[Librarian Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first book by Monette that I've read; the plot was a bit contrived in places, but the characters were so clear and engaging that I found it a wonderful read. Tom is a wonderful ambassador from the nightmare land of the early years of AIDS - scared, defiant, cocky, sweet. It's easy to leave those years in the past, when ignorance and isolation left so many to die alone... but Tom manages to find sanctuary, friendship, and even love.

I look forward to reading Monette's other books; I love his style of writing and his ability to bring life to his characters and their world.

[Skip · Rating 4 out of 5]

More beautiful writing from Monette.
Even though the plot-line gets a little soap-opera-reaching fantastical, Monette's careful thinking and courageous voices rings clear.
One of the final lines:
"Home is the place you get to, not the place you've been."

[Fatima · Rating 3 out of 5]

its rely a nice book ... u actually get to know d life style of troubled children dt how their lives r affectd by tragedies..though d end is an incmplete puzzle which leaves u to decide how a happy endin u want=)

[Edward Amato · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoy reading anything by Paul Monette. He represents to me many of the lost voices of my generation who have died of AIDS. Over 25 years has passed since being diagnosed with AIDS was a death sentence and reading his works brings back the heartache and heroism of that era.

[Patricia Boyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

As usual, I enjoyed Paul Monette's book. As with his other books, this story deals with AIDS and the human factor.

[Kathleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Halfway Home by Paul Monette (2002)

[Marvic Galarion · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the greatest book I've ever read. this is really my most favorite.