Closing Distance

by Jim Oliver

Facing forty, shrewd and successful entrepreneur and long-distance runner Pete Flowers uses the stark reality of his mother's cancer to reexamine his life and his relationships with his siblings. QPB. BOMC Alt.

Genres: Gay Fiction

288 pages, Hardcover

First published September 16, 1992

Reviews

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very interesting novel about a handsome gay man who has it all. He has great friends, a wealthy/loving family, a mother who's wise and full of wisdom, a father who wants him to take over the family business, interesting siblings, is a successful entrepreneur himself, handsome, a runner, has an ex bf whom he's friends with yet the ex bf is still madly in love with him. In the midst of having it all, Pete who's about to turn forty feels lonely, is unsure about his life and where his life is taking him. On top of that he's afraid that he might have AIDS and has a very ill mother who's recovering from breast cancer that spread to her brain, in which makes her have visions of some sort. Pete in the end decides to put his business up for sale and take off on an adventure to Madagascar, in which he tells his ex lover/best friend to join him. The book is open ended but, with the many clues that his sister Bea's mother-in-law gives, one can come up with their own ending. Overall this book has very developed characters with very interesting lives of their own. It's a book worth reading.

[Ron Mohring · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just re-read this after several years, and it holds up well. Interesting, well-crafted characters; some brilliant description; and an engrossing forward narrative that expands essentially a negligible, quiet plot into a pleasurable read. The characterizations are so well-wrought, some scenes and descriptions have stayed with me for many years (I who forgot that I'd read Peter Cameron's _The Weekend_ until about page 45 when I re-read it a few years later). Crisp, lifelike dialogue. In fact, I think this novel compares well against Cameron's: I can see them both in my mind as fully dimensional. I can imagine them as films.