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Geography of the Heart: A Memoir
In this poignant memoir, the author interweaves two fascinating stories: his own upbringing as the youngest of nine children of a Kentucky whiskey maker and that of his lover Larry Rose, the only child of German Jews, survivors of the Holocaust. With grace and affectionate humor, he follows their relationship from their first meeting through Larry's death. "I'm so lucky, " his lover told him repeatedly, even as he was confronting HIV. "Denial, pure and simple, " Johnson told himself, "until our third and final trip to Paris, where on our last night in the city we sat together in the courtyard of the Picasso Museum. There I turned to him and said 'I'm so lucky, ' and it was as if the time allotted to him to teach me this lesson, the time allotted to me to learn it had been consumed, and there was nothing left but the facts of things to play out."
240 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1996
12 people are currently reading
922 people want to read
About the author
Fenton Johnson
33 books44 followersFenton Johnson is an award-winning author who teaches in the creative writing programs at the University of Arizona and Spalding University.
Librarian note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Fenton^Johnson
Librarian note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Fenton^Johnson
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 66 reviews
August 14, 2015
A beautiful and reflective memoir which recalls the gentle love of two men for each other, tragically brought to an end by AIDS.
Fenton Johnson's memoir recalls his relationship with the high school teacher Larry Rose who was the only child of German-Jewish refugees from the holocaust.
The memoir is gentle. Some AIDS memoirs are prophetic in the way they tell the story of the AIDS crisis (Paul Monette's Borrowed Time), others recall the political activism and wider political issues of the time (Sean Strub's Body Counts), but this memoir focuses more closely on the love between two men and how they were drawn deeper into the relationship despite the spectre of AIDS.
The memoir also differs from others because it tells the story from the perspective of an HIV- negative person. Fenton Johnson tells the story of what it is like to love as part of a sero-discordant couple (one person is HIV positive and the other negative). Although this brings a kind of tension into the relationship, Larry, his partner, receives this as a gift and source of joy.
In telling us this story the author is also teaching us about the nature of love and how it is very much a mystery and how we should find different dimensions of ourselves by loving another. He recounts his resistance to the relationship and how he gradually opened his life and heart to Larry but not without much discussion and reflection between the two men.
His memoir reminds us that there is a certain letting go, lowering of barriers, trust and courage that lie at the heart of true love. It tells how the two men came out to their families in different ways and shows the differences between the two men's backgrounds (country boy, city boy) and how they flourished despite differences in their upbringing and families.
This is also a story that celebrates the coming together of two men, the comfort and courage they found in each other and the intimacy and closeness within the relationship. Not just a sexual intimacy but a real intimacy of companionship. I particularly loved the way they spent time reading to each other and their travels together.
And their's was also a true and enduring friendship. The two men became friends and then gradually fell in love but first they were friends and they did things together. They travelled together, visited each other's families, learnt new things together and it is the loss of this companionship that made the loss of Larry's life so hard to deal with.
Fenton shows it is not just the loss of a partner, but the loss of a son and the loneliness that follows from this. (The book is not mournful or grieving in tone but is gentle and very appreciative, recalling the beauty of the relationship. In this way the sadness seeps through as the reader mourns the loss of Larry and so many others but it is also a story of thankfulness and hope. Thankfulness for the opportunity to love in this way and gratitude for having experienced a love which is deep and real.
Fenton Johnson's memoir recalls his relationship with the high school teacher Larry Rose who was the only child of German-Jewish refugees from the holocaust.
The memoir is gentle. Some AIDS memoirs are prophetic in the way they tell the story of the AIDS crisis (Paul Monette's Borrowed Time), others recall the political activism and wider political issues of the time (Sean Strub's Body Counts), but this memoir focuses more closely on the love between two men and how they were drawn deeper into the relationship despite the spectre of AIDS.
The memoir also differs from others because it tells the story from the perspective of an HIV- negative person. Fenton Johnson tells the story of what it is like to love as part of a sero-discordant couple (one person is HIV positive and the other negative). Although this brings a kind of tension into the relationship, Larry, his partner, receives this as a gift and source of joy.
In telling us this story the author is also teaching us about the nature of love and how it is very much a mystery and how we should find different dimensions of ourselves by loving another. He recounts his resistance to the relationship and how he gradually opened his life and heart to Larry but not without much discussion and reflection between the two men.
His memoir reminds us that there is a certain letting go, lowering of barriers, trust and courage that lie at the heart of true love. It tells how the two men came out to their families in different ways and shows the differences between the two men's backgrounds (country boy, city boy) and how they flourished despite differences in their upbringing and families.
This is also a story that celebrates the coming together of two men, the comfort and courage they found in each other and the intimacy and closeness within the relationship. Not just a sexual intimacy but a real intimacy of companionship. I particularly loved the way they spent time reading to each other and their travels together.
And their's was also a true and enduring friendship. The two men became friends and then gradually fell in love but first they were friends and they did things together. They travelled together, visited each other's families, learnt new things together and it is the loss of this companionship that made the loss of Larry's life so hard to deal with.
Fenton shows it is not just the loss of a partner, but the loss of a son and the loneliness that follows from this. (The book is not mournful or grieving in tone but is gentle and very appreciative, recalling the beauty of the relationship. In this way the sadness seeps through as the reader mourns the loss of Larry and so many others but it is also a story of thankfulness and hope. Thankfulness for the opportunity to love in this way and gratitude for having experienced a love which is deep and real.
November 23, 2018
This memoir is aptly named, as it is one of the most moving documents I've ever read on the nature of loving someone and the mysteries of the human heart. Johnson recalls the opening of his heart throughout the courtship and partnership of Larry Rose, an HIV+ teacher, and he does so by weaving together scenes from their life together, their childhoods apart, and of course the final deterioration of Rose at the hands of an insidious disease. Each section concludes with these stunning epiphanies about the workings and mechanics of love.
I don't read many memoirs, but when they are the right story at the right time, they give me glimpses into the human heart that fiction can't accomplish. I will continue to read AIDS memoirs because of their vulnerability and the hope that grows from such tragedy.
I'm astonished that Geography of the Heart only has 57 reviews and 367 ratings. This is a book that deserves a wider readership for what it teaches us about why and how we love. I believe that all of us would benefit from the revelations that come with therapy; we all have a braver self we could usher into the world. Fenton Johnson gives me an example of how one can use writing (as well as therapy) to make sense of the stickiness and travails of our own heart and rise with more courage, sanity, and compassion.
Geography of the Heart is a heart-warming, sometimes devastating read, but it also stands as a model of the self-work I still need to do. What a gift to be given on Thanksgiving this year. I'm so thankful for books and love and the paths to emotional health I've found these past few years.
I don't read many memoirs, but when they are the right story at the right time, they give me glimpses into the human heart that fiction can't accomplish. I will continue to read AIDS memoirs because of their vulnerability and the hope that grows from such tragedy.
I'm astonished that Geography of the Heart only has 57 reviews and 367 ratings. This is a book that deserves a wider readership for what it teaches us about why and how we love. I believe that all of us would benefit from the revelations that come with therapy; we all have a braver self we could usher into the world. Fenton Johnson gives me an example of how one can use writing (as well as therapy) to make sense of the stickiness and travails of our own heart and rise with more courage, sanity, and compassion.
Geography of the Heart is a heart-warming, sometimes devastating read, but it also stands as a model of the self-work I still need to do. What a gift to be given on Thanksgiving this year. I'm so thankful for books and love and the paths to emotional health I've found these past few years.
February 20, 2010
I was up early this morning, so decided to that I should find a reason to sit in the sunrooom and cry for two hours.
Thankfully, I had yet to return this book, borrowed from my neighbor a year ago.
You know from the first page that this is the author's memoir on losing his partner to AIDS. And while I wasn't entirely wrapped up in the author's writing, I still couldn't resist being utterly moved by his story.
It's a book truly about love - more brutally honest and eternally hopeful than any harlequin romance novel I've read so far.
Thankfully, I had yet to return this book, borrowed from my neighbor a year ago.
You know from the first page that this is the author's memoir on losing his partner to AIDS. And while I wasn't entirely wrapped up in the author's writing, I still couldn't resist being utterly moved by his story.
It's a book truly about love - more brutally honest and eternally hopeful than any harlequin romance novel I've read so far.
March 24, 2021
No me gustó nada porque el protagonista es demasiado egocéntrico, todo es lo que él piensa, siente y padece sin ninguna empatía hacia el resto de los secundarios del libro. Luego al final quiere hacernos creer que era el "amor de su vida...." Vamos que no consigue que se lo crea nadie!
Tres estrellas porque no es malo, el tal Fenton Johnson como orador es un hacha, la prosa es maravillosa, pero durante todo el libro es un prepotente que se quiere hacer pasar por mártir, todo es "yo, mi, me, conmigo" y con ello solo consigue que te caiga fatal y quieras abofetearlo por imbécil .
Tres estrellas porque no es malo, el tal Fenton Johnson como orador es un hacha, la prosa es maravillosa, pero durante todo el libro es un prepotente que se quiere hacer pasar por mártir, todo es "yo, mi, me, conmigo" y con ello solo consigue que te caiga fatal y quieras abofetearlo por imbécil .
October 17, 2018
Quite possibly the most beautiful book I have ever (and will ever) read.
July 8, 2015
Quotable:
[O]pportunities for romance don't present themselves often to writers, introverted curmudgeons who work at home. More to the point, everywhere I turned I encountered the inexorable law of desire: those whom I wanted didn't want me; those who wanted me I didn't want.
My seventh grade began with Sister Marie Therese announcing that she would not teach math or science. These were godless subjects, she said, in which we'd be amply indoctrinated later on. She would give over those precious hours of instruction to penmanship and religion.
Every relationship comes to these moments, where yes confronts no, where one partner must yield to the other partner's way of being. Larry was domestic by nature; beyond that, he had good reasons to want this love to be as intense as possible. He was living, in Flannery O'Connor's memorable phrase, as if he had a gun to his head.
But that is exactly the point, of course. We each live with that gun to our head, however we like to pretend otherwise. To advance into our life's, to open new doors, we have to shut old doors behind us.
We don't fall in love for reasons. This is the source of love's meaning and of our obsession with it. In an age where every phenomenon is assumed to have an explanation, love keeps us human; love taps us into mystery, into that which we can't control or explain: lone, and grief.
In the middle of that summer of our third year together came Larry's turn to choose what book we read aloud. He picked Garcia Marguez's Love in the Time of Cholera.
I balked for a moment at its heft (350 large pages of small print). But I had arrived at this superstitious conclusion, born of my Catholic fatalism and my love of books: So long as we were in the middle of a book, he wouldn't die. The longer the book, the better.
To die in happiness, loved and in love - this is no small miracle, a gift we cannot question but can only accept, in gratefulness and humility.
[T]hose who transcend bitterness are our true teachers.
We are all survivors, after all, we are all mourners on this mortal earth, who choose daily the measure of our participation (or lack thereof) in the world's fate, which is to say its morality, which is to say its grief.
[O]pportunities for romance don't present themselves often to writers, introverted curmudgeons who work at home. More to the point, everywhere I turned I encountered the inexorable law of desire: those whom I wanted didn't want me; those who wanted me I didn't want.
My seventh grade began with Sister Marie Therese announcing that she would not teach math or science. These were godless subjects, she said, in which we'd be amply indoctrinated later on. She would give over those precious hours of instruction to penmanship and religion.
Every relationship comes to these moments, where yes confronts no, where one partner must yield to the other partner's way of being. Larry was domestic by nature; beyond that, he had good reasons to want this love to be as intense as possible. He was living, in Flannery O'Connor's memorable phrase, as if he had a gun to his head.
But that is exactly the point, of course. We each live with that gun to our head, however we like to pretend otherwise. To advance into our life's, to open new doors, we have to shut old doors behind us.
We don't fall in love for reasons. This is the source of love's meaning and of our obsession with it. In an age where every phenomenon is assumed to have an explanation, love keeps us human; love taps us into mystery, into that which we can't control or explain: lone, and grief.
In the middle of that summer of our third year together came Larry's turn to choose what book we read aloud. He picked Garcia Marguez's Love in the Time of Cholera.
I balked for a moment at its heft (350 large pages of small print). But I had arrived at this superstitious conclusion, born of my Catholic fatalism and my love of books: So long as we were in the middle of a book, he wouldn't die. The longer the book, the better.
To die in happiness, loved and in love - this is no small miracle, a gift we cannot question but can only accept, in gratefulness and humility.
[T]hose who transcend bitterness are our true teachers.
We are all survivors, after all, we are all mourners on this mortal earth, who choose daily the measure of our participation (or lack thereof) in the world's fate, which is to say its morality, which is to say its grief.
September 18, 2016
I really enjoyed this story. It's an evocative and poignant tale of two lovers at the height of the AIDS epidemic, one of whom began the relationship with HIV. Fenton Johnson is a great story teller, who weaves his Kentucky childhood well with his partner's European Jewish roots, and the budding love of these two men of disparate cultures. I especially enjoyed the way that Fenton went about to honor Larry's life after his death, particularly his visit to Larry's former students. A beautiful but sad story, worth the investment:
September 13, 2015
This is a remarkable, wrenching memoir. Johnson's prose is controlled, unflinching, and precise and his words convey real wisdom. He painstakingly lays out the anatomy of his love relationship with an HIV positive partner and unfolds how a reserved, guarded man reluctantly fell in love with a passionate, effusive man whose doors remained wide open. The narration of his partner's descent into AIDS was fully dimensional. This relationship and the AIDS epidemic as he experienced it in the '80s was so vivid, as though I were experiencing it myself. It's been a long while since I've experienced a book in that way. Near the end I found myself sobbing uncontrollably as I turned the pages. I would cry until my glasses were so misty I couldn't see the words on the page. I'd take them off and read without my glasses until I had a headache, then put the glasses on again, and cry some more.
One of the book's remarkable qualities is that it brings to life the horror of what it is to watch one's lover die of AIDs and, at the same time, affirms the profound blessing that love grants in the midst of suffering. As sad as this memoir made me feel, it was ultimately cleansing and redeeming.
"To love is to willingly lover our defenses, a terrifying prospect in any time and place but especially so at a time and in a place where we perceive ourselves as having so much (HIV; violence; social, cultural, environmental degradation) to defend ourselves against. To love is to give oneself over to another, to entrust to someone else a power that all good sense would have us reserve for ourselves. So we give away some part of ourselves, to find that part returned to us tenfold, in ways we could never have predicted and cannot rationally understand. Loaves and fishes. Miracles happen."
There are many, many gifts in Johnson's writing. So glad I read this book.
One of the book's remarkable qualities is that it brings to life the horror of what it is to watch one's lover die of AIDs and, at the same time, affirms the profound blessing that love grants in the midst of suffering. As sad as this memoir made me feel, it was ultimately cleansing and redeeming.
"To love is to willingly lover our defenses, a terrifying prospect in any time and place but especially so at a time and in a place where we perceive ourselves as having so much (HIV; violence; social, cultural, environmental degradation) to defend ourselves against. To love is to give oneself over to another, to entrust to someone else a power that all good sense would have us reserve for ourselves. So we give away some part of ourselves, to find that part returned to us tenfold, in ways we could never have predicted and cannot rationally understand. Loaves and fishes. Miracles happen."
There are many, many gifts in Johnson's writing. So glad I read this book.
September 24, 2020
In this 1996 memoir readers follow author Fenton Johnson's struggle as his lover becomes sick with AIDS, and the lessons learned from that tragic time. The author expresses his journey in terms of geography, as the couple makes its way to and from their respective homes in Los Angeles and Kentucky, and then to their spiritual haven in France, with stopovers in San Francisco providing the anchor for the story.
Johnson's account of their travels, which parallel the decline in his partner's health, is competently and at times touchingly rendered, yet somehow lacking. Many of the vignettes focus on the material aspect of their relationship: expensive French dinners, designer clothes and floral arrangements that seem to stand in for the intimacy the couple feels. The descriptive parts of the story have the feel of a one-sided creative writing exercise.
But travel and leisure as life fails to satisfy readers when the creativity falters at the point where it's most needed: to express the emotional, physical, and psychological intimacy of the two men. Interspersed within this account and packed into a coda at the end one reads of the lessons learned during this journey, a collection of sometimes trite observations laid out in a rather didactic register.
This author's memoir reflects his own private world to a fault. Too seldom does it connect with the broader injustices facing AIDS sufferers or connect with gays outside his own sphere. Of course, as a memoir Johnson had no obligation to do that. The subjective constraints, however, make this story of life and death during the AIDS epidemic an effort of unfulfilled potential.
Johnson's account of their travels, which parallel the decline in his partner's health, is competently and at times touchingly rendered, yet somehow lacking. Many of the vignettes focus on the material aspect of their relationship: expensive French dinners, designer clothes and floral arrangements that seem to stand in for the intimacy the couple feels. The descriptive parts of the story have the feel of a one-sided creative writing exercise.
But travel and leisure as life fails to satisfy readers when the creativity falters at the point where it's most needed: to express the emotional, physical, and psychological intimacy of the two men. Interspersed within this account and packed into a coda at the end one reads of the lessons learned during this journey, a collection of sometimes trite observations laid out in a rather didactic register.
This author's memoir reflects his own private world to a fault. Too seldom does it connect with the broader injustices facing AIDS sufferers or connect with gays outside his own sphere. Of course, as a memoir Johnson had no obligation to do that. The subjective constraints, however, make this story of life and death during the AIDS epidemic an effort of unfulfilled potential.
November 3, 2013
This exquisite memoir, read for class, brought me a whole new insight into what it means to be lucky!
Two very dissimilar men meet in San Francisco and fall in love. The relationship lasts three years, the third year during which the author cares for his lover as he dies of AIDS, on their third and final trip to Paris in 1990. Fenton Johnson's poignant memoir delves eep to explore the depths of a relationship that didn't stand much chance when it began. Rose, HIV+ was asymptomatic when he met Fenton and up front with his state. Rose was the only child of Holocaust survivors whose father escaped the Nazis and hid for three years with broken vertebrae in the Netherlands. Fenton, grew up the youngest of nine in a Catholic family in an isolated Kentucky community.
Fenton Johnson writes with honesty and beauty of his working through fear, commitment, care and grief through emotional renewal.
Two very dissimilar men meet in San Francisco and fall in love. The relationship lasts three years, the third year during which the author cares for his lover as he dies of AIDS, on their third and final trip to Paris in 1990. Fenton Johnson's poignant memoir delves eep to explore the depths of a relationship that didn't stand much chance when it began. Rose, HIV+ was asymptomatic when he met Fenton and up front with his state. Rose was the only child of Holocaust survivors whose father escaped the Nazis and hid for three years with broken vertebrae in the Netherlands. Fenton, grew up the youngest of nine in a Catholic family in an isolated Kentucky community.
Fenton Johnson writes with honesty and beauty of his working through fear, commitment, care and grief through emotional renewal.
November 10, 2015
This sad and poignant memoir by Fenton Johnson is about his love affair with Larry Rose, his HIV-positive partner who later died of AIDS. But more than just focusing on Larry's death, the writer chose to write about what true love means to him - in happiness and in times of grief (which also brings renewal and hope, he says). Through Larry's last few months, Fenton stayed by his side through the many downs and few moments of happiness together, never straying but also tormented by the impending grief. But both Larry and Fenton chose to focus on their happiness at present, even to the point of Larry's death.
"Life takes the shape of an hourglass: focusing down, past and future falling away until there is nothing but this moment, this present place, the two of us amid this ancient, pastoral, autumnal countryside. Surely this is as close as I will get - surely it is as close as anyone could bear - to love pure as sunlight; to our reason for being alive."
"Life takes the shape of an hourglass: focusing down, past and future falling away until there is nothing but this moment, this present place, the two of us amid this ancient, pastoral, autumnal countryside. Surely this is as close as I will get - surely it is as close as anyone could bear - to love pure as sunlight; to our reason for being alive."
June 8, 2022
Dear Fenton Johnson, I am so terribly sorry for your loss of Mr. Rose. I call him that because, while I never took an English class from him, I did end up in his rest-period my senior year. I had a bad experience with another BHS teacher and was excused from the other teacher's classroom and granted space in Mr. Rose's classroom. Mr. Rose was my safe place. I had heard rumors a derogatory word was painted over his door. I heard rumors about him. After I graduated, I heard the rumor that he passed away in Paris from AIDS. But I never really knew him. All I know is that he saved my life my senior year and no matter the rumors, he greeted EVERYONE with his genuine smile and open heart.
I took a long time to read this book. Mostly for similar reasons the author didn't want to enter into a relationship with an HIV+ partner. I knew the ending and didn't want the ending to come. So I read it slowly to make my experience last.
Thank you for braving everything to bring us your and Mr. Rose's story. I enjoyed getting to know him as a person, not just a high school teacher. What and who he enjoyed in life. His family. His history. Thank you for sharing, I truly enjoyed getting to know him better.
I took a long time to read this book. Mostly for similar reasons the author didn't want to enter into a relationship with an HIV+ partner. I knew the ending and didn't want the ending to come. So I read it slowly to make my experience last.
Thank you for braving everything to bring us your and Mr. Rose's story. I enjoyed getting to know him as a person, not just a high school teacher. What and who he enjoyed in life. His family. His history. Thank you for sharing, I truly enjoyed getting to know him better.
June 1, 2021
I first read Fenton’s work in At The Center of All Beauty. In it, he referred to this memoir about his relationship with his partner, Larry Rose, while he battled with AIDS. My heart broke reading this book- in Fenton’s words, I saw myself fearful to open up and love someone. But through his journey, I saw how much courage it takes to love, especially in the face of imminent death. I watched how someone, once so hesitant for many valid reasons, chose love in the face of death. This love story of two people, who happen to be men, shows what reaches the human soul is capable of for love. The selfless love of the author for his dying lover was one of the most beautiful things to behold. It is a love I someday hope to experience for myself.
September 28, 2018
On the surface it is the story of a young man and his three year relationship with his HIV positive partner, who ultimately dies. However it is a beautifully written reflection on love and on letting yourself LOVE. About accepting love for what it is and accepting it when it arrives. About letting yourself go. Maybe I liked this book so much because the author is obviously so much of an over-thinker and over-analyzer and so much of the story was him (yes, heavily analyzing, but) realizing that being like that held him back with his love and with his family. Gorgeous book. Cried several times in public while reading it.
October 29, 2019
Non fiction, well written. I got frustrated with the author at times, but I appreciated that because he was being honest about his thoughts and memories when many of us would want to edit out our less generous selves. As much as I'd like to absorb the lessons he learned without experiencing such grief, I don't think that's really possible. There is a disconnect between the lessons he learned and his view on life, and mine, and i don't think this book can come close to bridging that gap.
January 19, 2018
A touching memoir of love and grief following the author’s struggle with his partner’s death from AIDS. Johnson folds his stories like a master of origami, revisiting pivotal moments as he unfolds himself in reconciling a devastating loss.
July 3, 2019
One of the best books I've ever had the pleasure of reading. It should be at the top of anybody's reading list. The book is well written, smart, and approachable, which brought me moments of uncontained laughter, tears, and self-reflection. PS - I'm not one prone to writing reviews, let alone a 5☆
October 27, 2019
A moving book that describes the writer's reflection on personal experiences of confronting illness and death. It is a love story set in an era (late 80s) when HIV/AIDS was ravaging the gay community of San Francisco. It is a poignant meditation on what it means to love amidst suffering and loss.
June 25, 2025
My favorite book. Very personal exploration into the idea of love and grief.
What this book taught me was to appreciate love more while it’s here. To appreciate it in all its forms. Romantic, platonic, and familial. Love is the renewal of our spirits.
What this book taught me was to appreciate love more while it’s here. To appreciate it in all its forms. Romantic, platonic, and familial. Love is the renewal of our spirits.
September 20, 2017
Beautifully written tribute to his partner and their love
December 8, 2020
Gorgeous, smart, touching, full of heart & soul. And grief; full of beautiful honest grief too--on the other side of which is pure hope. And love. Fenton Johnson is a special writer.
May 10, 2022
Show me the beginning and ending of a sphere; then I will show you the beginning and ending of a life.
July 12, 2023
Story is lovely in itself, but the writing is exquisite.
August 15, 2024
That sharp and edgy gap between those sentenced to untimely death and those who love and care for them -- is it not a gap at all? Is it the space, the water in which all our love must learn to swim?
March 14, 2017
Very much not my usual genre but a moving book nonetheless. Some deep insights into grief and love and how they interact.
March 7, 2017
To love is to give oneself to another, to entrust to someone else a power that all good sense would have us reserve to ourselves. So we give away some part of ourselves, to find that part returned to us tenfold, in ways we could never have predicted and cannot rationally understand. Loaves and fishes. Miracles happen.
This book made me cry. The writing was very lovely and it was a really interesting perspective on love, grief, and memory.
This book made me cry. The writing was very lovely and it was a really interesting perspective on love, grief, and memory.
March 13, 2013
My husband and I tried to read this memoir aloud, together. This book didn't lend itself well to that. The beginning felt slow, reading together, so that's why it lost the fifth star. If I'd started it out alone, it may have gotten that fifth star.
I read the last half on my own. It was beautiful! This gay couple of the late 1980's, one dying of AIDS and one HIV negative, is not gut wrenchingly sad, as you might fear. It is a story of growth and love, in so many ways and for so many people. This is why it is beautiful and their growth made teary. People learning, growing, opening always touches me.
The last part, Lucky Fellows, was exceptional. I don't think you would appreciate or learn as much from it if you hadn't read the story. I have several lines and passages marked as lessons to keep working on. Here are two: ..."those who transcend bitterness are our true teachers."..."there is no love worth the name without responsibility."
The writing was a calm, vibrant, warm atmosphere. I could settle in to read and forget the time.
I read the last half on my own. It was beautiful! This gay couple of the late 1980's, one dying of AIDS and one HIV negative, is not gut wrenchingly sad, as you might fear. It is a story of growth and love, in so many ways and for so many people. This is why it is beautiful and their growth made teary. People learning, growing, opening always touches me.
The last part, Lucky Fellows, was exceptional. I don't think you would appreciate or learn as much from it if you hadn't read the story. I have several lines and passages marked as lessons to keep working on. Here are two: ..."those who transcend bitterness are our true teachers."..."there is no love worth the name without responsibility."
The writing was a calm, vibrant, warm atmosphere. I could settle in to read and forget the time.
February 1, 2015
However on the reading front I just finished Fenton Johnson's Geography of the Heart (New York: Washington Square Press, 1996). A memoir of his time with his partner Larry Rose it tells of the love story between a sero-discordant couple. In the course of the memoir Rose died of complications from AIDS and Johnson uses the book as a means of coping with his love for Rose and the ensuing loss. What makes the story special is the diverse backgrounds of Rose (Rose was the only child of German-Jewish Holocaust survivors) and Johnson (the youngest of a southern Catholic family) and how Johnson uses this diversity to weave together a lyrical narrative about love and loss.
“How is it possible, after all, that someone should simply vanish? How can someone who lived, loved, and wrangled with God and with himself just disappear? I don’t know how and in what sense but they’re here. Since time is an illusion, why shouldn’t everything remain?”
Issac Bashevis Singer, Shosha
Quoted in Fenton Johnson, Geography of the Heart: A Memoir (New York: Scribner, 1996): 209: 2009:12:24
“How is it possible, after all, that someone should simply vanish? How can someone who lived, loved, and wrangled with God and with himself just disappear? I don’t know how and in what sense but they’re here. Since time is an illusion, why shouldn’t everything remain?”
Issac Bashevis Singer, Shosha
Quoted in Fenton Johnson, Geography of the Heart: A Memoir (New York: Scribner, 1996): 209: 2009:12:24
August 31, 2014
The single most powerful look at love, pain, loss, grief, and human connection that I have ever read.
Fenton Johnson slowly unravels his own journey from that of a man full of fear and resistance to love towards a man completely open to the most intimate, tender love as his lover faced (and succumbed) to death.
Gently revealing his family history and the history of his lover as we journey with Johnson towards an inevitable and shattering end, this love story is the most exquisite and touching account of love I've ever encountered.
Brutally honest about his own short-comings and failures, the vulnerability that Johnson spills across the pages of his story is simply breathtaking.
A must read for anyone and everyone seeking to expand their own understanding of love and grief.
Fenton Johnson slowly unravels his own journey from that of a man full of fear and resistance to love towards a man completely open to the most intimate, tender love as his lover faced (and succumbed) to death.
Gently revealing his family history and the history of his lover as we journey with Johnson towards an inevitable and shattering end, this love story is the most exquisite and touching account of love I've ever encountered.
Brutally honest about his own short-comings and failures, the vulnerability that Johnson spills across the pages of his story is simply breathtaking.
A must read for anyone and everyone seeking to expand their own understanding of love and grief.
February 26, 2008
This book is a memoir by a guy whose partner dies of AIDS, but also it's about loss in general. The most interesting thing is the way the author talks about how notices that guys who have AIDS carefully avoid any reference to the future or long-range plans, so you kind of know they are sick before you really know. And the way this grief is different than other kinds of grief because afterwards when he starts dating again he keeps on meeting more people who are sick in the same way and has to decide over and over again if he wants to go through that thing again. That's what an epidemic is about, I guess. It isn't my favorite memoir, but the topic was interesting.
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