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Manhattan #4
When You Don't See Me
Being Invisible Is Nick Dunill's M.O. For nineteen years, he's been "the one who disappears" to his disapproving, Midwestern family. And now in New York City, a metropolis of anonymity built on not making eye contact, he feels right at home. Walking the streets of the Village, sneaking into dive bars, cleaning apartments, and trying to co-exist in a cramped apartment with his three roommates, Nick's trying to find his way without doing anything to put his wounded heart at risk, all the while wondering, "Does anything last?" But Nick's vanishing act is about to be challenged in ways he never dreamed. Little by little, he's being forced into the land of the living—into relationships and opportunities, love and sex, truth and acceptance, into the heartbreaking secrets of his past and the hopeful chances of his future. And the more visible Nick becomes, the more he realizes that in life and love, disappearing is not an option… "A book to get lost in."-- Bay Area Reporter on Someone Like You "Funny and touching with wonderful characters."-- The Texas Triangle on He's The One "A charming, humorously appealing tale."-- Publishers Weekly on It Had To Be You Timothy James Beck is the author of Someone Like You, I'm Your Man, He's the One, and It Had to Be You. He divides his time between California, Texas, and New York, where he's hard at work on his next novel.
301 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 1, 2007
11 people are currently reading
523 people want to read
About the author
Timothy James Beck
6 books40 followersThe writing team of Timothy James Beck is made up of four writers (Timothy Forry, Jim Carter, Timothy J. Lambert & Becky Cochrane) who meet as a group twice a year, but write their novels in tandem using the Internet. For more info, please visit the TJB FAQ page on their website.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
February 18, 2009
It's not the worst book I have ever read but I must say that it is not part of the good-book-league too. I thought the story was all over the place. I really had no idea where Mr. Beck wanted to go with the story. Too many characters in one go, I struggled really hard to keep track with all the names -- and it wasn't even a detective story! I don't think I'll keep buying his books. I don't have the chemistry with him, I guess. If I don't have that chemistry with an author's work, I prefer to keep him in the background.
September 21, 2017
As I’m doing some cleanup of my library and have to get rid of some books, I decided this should be one of them – so I may as well write three sentences about it. To put it straightly – this is not a good book. It lacks structure, it lacks resolution to most themes and subplots, and even said themes were… just there? There is some sort of bildungsroman going there but it’s really underdeveloped. There are very promising ideas in this book that leads to nowhere.
So Nick moves out from his parents of choice (after first moving out of his small town where he felt rejected by family and the whole community because of being gay) and starts living in a flat shared with three roommates. He is also dealing with trauma after 11/9, tries to find his place in the world, navigate friendships with people he’s already known and new people who appear in his life, and maybe – just maybe – find a happy little romance. Sounds good? Because for me it sounds just like a book I like reading a lot. Yet, nothing of it really happens. It’s there and sometimes it comes to the surface, sometimes the author seems to forget about it altogether. The lack of any romance was also a disappointment but I could be absolutely fine with it if the book was about coming of age of the hero. But to be honest, I can’t answer this simple question: what this book was about. I really have no idea.
So why have I kept it for so long even though I usually get rid of unwanted books immediately? Because there are two scenes I absolutely love. Especially one, that inspired me to write my own novel (that otherwise has totally nothing to do with any of it but that one image…). To make it funnier, the scenes I loved have no impact on the plot. At all. I have no idea what they do in this book. I have no idea what the author was thinking.
Seriously, a little puzzle. Completely unsatisfying though.
(I wrote my favourite scenes down. That will be enough.)
So Nick moves out from his parents of choice (after first moving out of his small town where he felt rejected by family and the whole community because of being gay) and starts living in a flat shared with three roommates. He is also dealing with trauma after 11/9, tries to find his place in the world, navigate friendships with people he’s already known and new people who appear in his life, and maybe – just maybe – find a happy little romance. Sounds good? Because for me it sounds just like a book I like reading a lot. Yet, nothing of it really happens. It’s there and sometimes it comes to the surface, sometimes the author seems to forget about it altogether. The lack of any romance was also a disappointment but I could be absolutely fine with it if the book was about coming of age of the hero. But to be honest, I can’t answer this simple question: what this book was about. I really have no idea.
So why have I kept it for so long even though I usually get rid of unwanted books immediately? Because there are two scenes I absolutely love. Especially one, that inspired me to write my own novel (that otherwise has totally nothing to do with any of it but that one image…). To make it funnier, the scenes I loved have no impact on the plot. At all. I have no idea what they do in this book. I have no idea what the author was thinking.
Seriously, a little puzzle. Completely unsatisfying though.
(I wrote my favourite scenes down. That will be enough.)
May 1, 2013
This was a book I was eager to read because in so many ways at least on the surface it very closely resembles the novel I am currently writing. Like my protagonist, the story centers around a 19-year-old who leaves home because of the rejection and alienation he feels for being gay. He moves to a big city (in this case Manhattan, in my story Brian moves to San Francisco) in hopes of finding acceptance and the chance to be himself and live life fully. It also takes place in the recent past so the prevailing sociopolitical attitudes I reasoned would be similar. "Eureka!" was my initial reaction. I have found something that should inspire me and stimulate my creative juices.
As it turned out this proved to be a very disappointing book. The story began promisingly enough but quickly sputtered out. I did not find the protagonist or for that matter any of the characters particularly interesting or sympathetic. One problem I thought was that the author threw in too many individuals and never really developed them fully. Even the story's main characters seemed to be shallow at best. In addition I found one part of the story line to be absurdly contrived. Nick, the protagonist has 3 roommates, one of whom is a woman named Morgan whom he and his other roommates find quite irritating. About 3/4 of the way through the book we find out that a woman whom Nick works for just happens to be Morgan's long-lost sister. Somehow the reader is expected to find that plausible in a city as huge as NYC. Pretty absurd in my opinion.
The book seemed to drag on and on and never really took off. Even though the book is less than 300 pages it took an eternity to read not because it was deep but simply because it was so vapid. The story ends with Nick temporarily returning to his small Midwestern roots to confront his family. That part of the story is left more or less to the reader's imagination other than a vague suggestion that Nick and his twin brother may have a shot at finally becoming friends.
I was frankly glad to turn the last page of this book and move on to some other more interesting story with better character development. Fortunately the next book I read A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham was very fulfilling and extremely well written.
As it turned out this proved to be a very disappointing book. The story began promisingly enough but quickly sputtered out. I did not find the protagonist or for that matter any of the characters particularly interesting or sympathetic. One problem I thought was that the author threw in too many individuals and never really developed them fully. Even the story's main characters seemed to be shallow at best. In addition I found one part of the story line to be absurdly contrived. Nick, the protagonist has 3 roommates, one of whom is a woman named Morgan whom he and his other roommates find quite irritating. About 3/4 of the way through the book we find out that a woman whom Nick works for just happens to be Morgan's long-lost sister. Somehow the reader is expected to find that plausible in a city as huge as NYC. Pretty absurd in my opinion.
The book seemed to drag on and on and never really took off. Even though the book is less than 300 pages it took an eternity to read not because it was deep but simply because it was so vapid. The story ends with Nick temporarily returning to his small Midwestern roots to confront his family. That part of the story is left more or less to the reader's imagination other than a vague suggestion that Nick and his twin brother may have a shot at finally becoming friends.
I was frankly glad to turn the last page of this book and move on to some other more interesting story with better character development. Fortunately the next book I read A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham was very fulfilling and extremely well written.
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January 1, 2010The collaboration of the four authors who write under the pen-name of Timothy James Beck built a strange “New York” series: all the spectrum of gay experiences and this time was the time of the young adult, self-discovery journey of a young gay man dealing with the traumatic experience of the after 9/11.
At the beginning of the novel, the reader, or at least me, has the impression that Nick is older than he really is. He has a job, he is no more a student, he lives alone, better he shares a two rooms apartment with other three roommates, and he seems to have a whole lot of experience behind his shoulders… but little by little we discover another reality, Nick is only 19 years old, a drop out from college, and he has just left the safe shelter of his uncle Blaine’s posh apartment in lower Manhattan (Blaine and Daniel are the main characters of other two novels by Timothy James Beck, and supporting characters of all the others too). Nick’s story is not displayed up front for the reader, but we rebuild it piece by piece during the length of the book.
When he was only 16 years old, Nick decided to leave his homeland little country town to go live in the Big City with wealth and gay Uncle Blaine. From Nick’s perspective, it was the only choice he had to escape a life of harassment, it’s was not a dream comes true, but more a punishment… for the reader’s perspective, and also for Nick’s relatives in Eau Claire, it was like winning a lottery, Nick was going to live an artsy life in one of the most challenging cities in the world. It can be sound strange, knowing how big New York City is, but Nick was searching for a safe shelter, for a place where to hide in security, a place where him being gay, and an artist, was not an oddity that made him being pointed out in the street. New York City gave him the anonymity he desired, but also a new family to look after him, Blaine and his lover Daniel as step-fathers, and Gwendy and Gretchen (his mother’s cousins) as step-mothers. Nick had to renounce to his real family, but he was happy all the same.
9/11 destroyed his security and his new-found make-up family. Two years later the New York City which was his safe shelter is now a place full of scaring things, Nick is scared by the subway, by the skyscrapers, but the fact that everyone around him was in someway affected by that tragic event. And Nick has only a solution for that: running away another time, leaving behind all the people who love him, searching another safe shelter in the anonymity.
Maybe since the previous novels I read by these authors were basically romances, I was expecting also for this one to be, and I was probably expecting that Nick’s solution to his troubles would have been to find love. And instead this is a classical self-discovery journey, and the solution is not to find the courage inside someone else, but inside you. And so yes, Nick has relationships, and some of them are also quite nice, made me wonder if it wouldn’t have been nice for them to developed in something more, but in the end, they were not the turning point of the story. Before being able to really fall in love, Nick has to learn that running away it’s not the way to resolve your trouble.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0758216866/?...
At the beginning of the novel, the reader, or at least me, has the impression that Nick is older than he really is. He has a job, he is no more a student, he lives alone, better he shares a two rooms apartment with other three roommates, and he seems to have a whole lot of experience behind his shoulders… but little by little we discover another reality, Nick is only 19 years old, a drop out from college, and he has just left the safe shelter of his uncle Blaine’s posh apartment in lower Manhattan (Blaine and Daniel are the main characters of other two novels by Timothy James Beck, and supporting characters of all the others too). Nick’s story is not displayed up front for the reader, but we rebuild it piece by piece during the length of the book.
When he was only 16 years old, Nick decided to leave his homeland little country town to go live in the Big City with wealth and gay Uncle Blaine. From Nick’s perspective, it was the only choice he had to escape a life of harassment, it’s was not a dream comes true, but more a punishment… for the reader’s perspective, and also for Nick’s relatives in Eau Claire, it was like winning a lottery, Nick was going to live an artsy life in one of the most challenging cities in the world. It can be sound strange, knowing how big New York City is, but Nick was searching for a safe shelter, for a place where to hide in security, a place where him being gay, and an artist, was not an oddity that made him being pointed out in the street. New York City gave him the anonymity he desired, but also a new family to look after him, Blaine and his lover Daniel as step-fathers, and Gwendy and Gretchen (his mother’s cousins) as step-mothers. Nick had to renounce to his real family, but he was happy all the same.
9/11 destroyed his security and his new-found make-up family. Two years later the New York City which was his safe shelter is now a place full of scaring things, Nick is scared by the subway, by the skyscrapers, but the fact that everyone around him was in someway affected by that tragic event. And Nick has only a solution for that: running away another time, leaving behind all the people who love him, searching another safe shelter in the anonymity.
Maybe since the previous novels I read by these authors were basically romances, I was expecting also for this one to be, and I was probably expecting that Nick’s solution to his troubles would have been to find love. And instead this is a classical self-discovery journey, and the solution is not to find the courage inside someone else, but inside you. And so yes, Nick has relationships, and some of them are also quite nice, made me wonder if it wouldn’t have been nice for them to developed in something more, but in the end, they were not the turning point of the story. Before being able to really fall in love, Nick has to learn that running away it’s not the way to resolve your trouble.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0758216866/?...
July 5, 2008
Author Timothy James Beck, helmer of such gay page-turners as Someone Like You, He's The One, and I'm Your Man, has introduced yet another displaced Midwestern teen, Nick Dunhill, in his latest novel, When You Don't See Me.
Shunned by his family members, including a twin brother, Chuck, who would rather see their kin sent away than accept his being gay, Nick takes off for the Big Apple to live with his Uncle Blaine and Blaine's partner, Daniel. An appreciator of all things creative, Nick graduates from a high school for visual arts and enrolls in a renowned New York City college for aspiring artists. As his sophomore year approaches, much to the disappointment of his uncle, Nick drops out so he can experience life on his own terms, and moves in with high school friends, Kendra and Roberto, and fourth roommate, Morgan.
What follows is essentially a catalog of events, typical of any coming-of-age novel, especially one where the teen is trying to get by on his own for the first time in New York City. Keeping each of the characters' (and their traits) straight proves to be a bit of a challenge for the reader-but it is precisely that which makes Nick's story compelling. He fights with Morgan, overcompensates for Kendra, worries about Roberto, ignores his uncle, lusts after his friend, Fred, and envies Blythe, a former classmate who has become a successful artist.
All the while, Nick has his share of sexual dalliances, loses his job and finds another, and touches base with his immediately family only whenever it is deemed absolutely necessary. Nick's story may be too involved and a bit jumbled, but it's easy enough to follow, and what one expects of a directionally-challenged 19-year-old. It would be accurate to call Nick an underachiever, yet the author somehow manages to make him the envy of all of us who wish they could turn back the clock, even just for one day.
Shunned by his family members, including a twin brother, Chuck, who would rather see their kin sent away than accept his being gay, Nick takes off for the Big Apple to live with his Uncle Blaine and Blaine's partner, Daniel. An appreciator of all things creative, Nick graduates from a high school for visual arts and enrolls in a renowned New York City college for aspiring artists. As his sophomore year approaches, much to the disappointment of his uncle, Nick drops out so he can experience life on his own terms, and moves in with high school friends, Kendra and Roberto, and fourth roommate, Morgan.
What follows is essentially a catalog of events, typical of any coming-of-age novel, especially one where the teen is trying to get by on his own for the first time in New York City. Keeping each of the characters' (and their traits) straight proves to be a bit of a challenge for the reader-but it is precisely that which makes Nick's story compelling. He fights with Morgan, overcompensates for Kendra, worries about Roberto, ignores his uncle, lusts after his friend, Fred, and envies Blythe, a former classmate who has become a successful artist.
All the while, Nick has his share of sexual dalliances, loses his job and finds another, and touches base with his immediately family only whenever it is deemed absolutely necessary. Nick's story may be too involved and a bit jumbled, but it's easy enough to follow, and what one expects of a directionally-challenged 19-year-old. It would be accurate to call Nick an underachiever, yet the author somehow manages to make him the envy of all of us who wish they could turn back the clock, even just for one day.
July 13, 2012
I feel like this was a bit of a miss for me. The story was essentially a year in the life of the main character. Although we tried to learn as he grew and became his own man in the big city nothing really felt complete. He had issues with his roommates: never really fully resolved. It was hinted more and more the trouble with his family and it seemed like he just started trying to heal from that. His gay family felt shunned or rejected by him when he seeks his independence... or thats what we are told but we don't get dragged through the emotions and turmoil they seem to talk about. So either the character is just completely self centered and really doesn't care about anyone around him or we didn't get the depth of character development that we could have had. A lot of times, conflict and plot points seemed kind of haphazardly thrown in to spice up the plot with out any real foreshadowing or powerful ties to the stories. There were a lot of characters who some times only popped up a few times and were quickly forgotten until they randomly popped up again.
in all, it felt like a jumble, but it never made me groan or roll my eyes and it did make me want to finish it, thus three stars. But when i did finish it, my response was just "this is it? seriously, where is the rest?"
in all, it felt like a jumble, but it never made me groan or roll my eyes and it did make me want to finish it, thus three stars. But when i did finish it, my response was just "this is it? seriously, where is the rest?"
November 28, 2012
At first, I thought the book was going to get off to a good start but I got rather disappointed as I read it.
The main character “Nick” is a 19yo transplant from the mid-west and his life in the “big city”. I found him dull and uninteresting. I also found his situations and interactions with the books other characters to be rather “cliché.”
The author had a real good opportunity to delve into why Nick seemed so ambivalent to love, career or life but chose to write about mundane scenarios in Nick’s life that really seem to go nowhere.
The book nor the characters really moved me. I also had trouble seeing who this book would appeal to.
The main character “Nick” is a 19yo transplant from the mid-west and his life in the “big city”. I found him dull and uninteresting. I also found his situations and interactions with the books other characters to be rather “cliché.”
The author had a real good opportunity to delve into why Nick seemed so ambivalent to love, career or life but chose to write about mundane scenarios in Nick’s life that really seem to go nowhere.
The book nor the characters really moved me. I also had trouble seeing who this book would appeal to.
December 1, 2023
My reaction to this story when I read it was - mediocre - nothing has made me change my mind. If I am honest it annoyed me it was so disappointing. I was probably much more intolerant back then, I certainly thought it wrong to publish such twaddle as a 'gay' novel. I felt there was something dishonest about it. A bit extreme of course I still think it is rubbish but I am more accepting of the inevitability of rubbish!
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July 6, 2010Read... But abandoned.
I'm all for gay novels, but this story about a self-hating gay boy who is searching for love and an apartment in New York is just not getting any empathy or interest from me. Maybe it's just that I'm not 'there' anymore.
Make the protaganist a mid-30s suburban housewife, and I'd be all over it. :)
I'm all for gay novels, but this story about a self-hating gay boy who is searching for love and an apartment in New York is just not getting any empathy or interest from me. Maybe it's just that I'm not 'there' anymore.
Make the protaganist a mid-30s suburban housewife, and I'd be all over it. :)
May 19, 2009
Too many characters, boring story.
February 14, 2020
changing my rating from 3 to 2 stars
TW: talk of and recovery from the 9/11 terrorist attacks; STDs, HIV and AIDS; an HIV-positive side character who gets outed on the internet without his permission.
The book is set in New York City in 2003 and is actually the last in a series about gay men in NYC, which I didn’t know until I’d actually finished the book. Am I interested in reading the books previous to this one that detail how the older men in this book got together? Not really, tbh. The writing just isn’t my cup of tea.
This book is basically a coming-of-age story for Nick Dunhill (not a coming-out story, he did that already and had to move in with his uncle after his parents flipped) as he tries to support himself in NYC while living with 3 roommates and dealing with a shitload of repressed emotions stemming from the trauma of the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and from a difficult past with his family where he always felt like the outsider.
There’s so many side characters in this book, and there wasn’t enough done to distinguish them all that they sometimes blended in together, or I’d forget exactly who was who. You don’t remember everyone but you can group them into roommates – family – work colleagues – college/artist friends.
It was published in 2007, way before YA even took off, and the writing definitely reflects that.
So that was a bummer. Not entirely bad, but not great either.
TW: talk of and recovery from the 9/11 terrorist attacks; STDs, HIV and AIDS; an HIV-positive side character who gets outed on the internet without his permission.
The book is set in New York City in 2003 and is actually the last in a series about gay men in NYC, which I didn’t know until I’d actually finished the book. Am I interested in reading the books previous to this one that detail how the older men in this book got together? Not really, tbh. The writing just isn’t my cup of tea.
This book is basically a coming-of-age story for Nick Dunhill (not a coming-out story, he did that already and had to move in with his uncle after his parents flipped) as he tries to support himself in NYC while living with 3 roommates and dealing with a shitload of repressed emotions stemming from the trauma of the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and from a difficult past with his family where he always felt like the outsider.
There’s so many side characters in this book, and there wasn’t enough done to distinguish them all that they sometimes blended in together, or I’d forget exactly who was who. You don’t remember everyone but you can group them into roommates – family – work colleagues – college/artist friends.
It was published in 2007, way before YA even took off, and the writing definitely reflects that.
So that was a bummer. Not entirely bad, but not great either.
November 23, 2018
What does it mean to strike out on your own?
This novel conveys a sense of our main character Nick in many subtle ways, so that when he balks, hesitates, remembers and so on, we gain understanding without any overt layering. It was more organic than many authors manage, and I loved it. This is Nick's...coming of age story, I suppose, in the shadow of loss after 9/11, in the distance from his parents and brothers, and the distances he's feeling from friends in New York. The reasons are revealed in that organic process I described. And I loved the ending. It feels very much like the latest book in a series, though it isn't labeled that way anywhere I saw but on the Goodreads page. The only problem I had was keeping a few names straight. Ultimately, I remember all the critical people in Nick's life.
Couple notes:
There's no on-page sex, if that's a thing you care about. In the Kindle edition, the next-to-last chapter is a series of scenes without any dividing spaces, which is a bit jarring. By then I was too invested to do more than scowl and read on, but I'd have appreciated a little warning.
This novel conveys a sense of our main character Nick in many subtle ways, so that when he balks, hesitates, remembers and so on, we gain understanding without any overt layering. It was more organic than many authors manage, and I loved it. This is Nick's...coming of age story, I suppose, in the shadow of loss after 9/11, in the distance from his parents and brothers, and the distances he's feeling from friends in New York. The reasons are revealed in that organic process I described. And I loved the ending. It feels very much like the latest book in a series, though it isn't labeled that way anywhere I saw but on the Goodreads page. The only problem I had was keeping a few names straight. Ultimately, I remember all the critical people in Nick's life.
Couple notes:
There's no on-page sex, if that's a thing you care about. In the Kindle edition, the next-to-last chapter is a series of scenes without any dividing spaces, which is a bit jarring. By then I was too invested to do more than scowl and read on, but I'd have appreciated a little warning.
August 13, 2022
A book I picked up randomly from a bookshelf in a hostel, and I liked it. The characters are interesting (especially Morgan), and the pacing is good. I also liked the representation of gay men and their struggles. I wouldn’t re-read the story nor recommend it per say, but it’s a good, in-between books read.
December 7, 2020
As others have mentioned previously, Beck is most certainly scattered all over the place with this one.
The ending was heartfelt and emotional but other than that, I felt reading required way too much brainstorming and processing.
The ending was heartfelt and emotional but other than that, I felt reading required way too much brainstorming and processing.
January 23, 2021
Really enjoyed this. Exploring sexuality and life and without being about sex or depressing.
June 20, 2021
Really was a 3.5 read for me. I liked the atmosphere of the book. I liked how it showed a person trying to get by in New York. However, the plot wasn't really for me.
October 23, 2011
This book took me completely by surprise. Not something I would have chosen for myself, I was intrigued from the first page and could not put it down. Told from the POV of Nick, aged 19, we watch his day to day life unfold as he does normal things like work, hunt for a new apartment, find roommates, etc. But there is so much more to it.
Nick comes out to his parents when he is about 16 and things change. He is tortured at school, his own brothers are no better and his dad can't accept that he is gay. So, he asks to move to NY where his Uncle lives. His uncle is also gay, and Nick adapts easily into the home his uncle and his boyfriend provide. The extended family his uncle has created are a haven for Nick.
Unfortunately, a dear friend of his uncle is the victim of the 9/11 bombings and Nick's world is once again disrupted. He quits school, moves out of his uncle's home and gets a job.
The book focuses on Nick and is kind of a coming of age story. Over the course of about a years time, We see Nick find a way to heal himself and allow the people he's always loved to be a part of his life once again.
My only complaint is that the ending felt rushed and abrupt. Just when we see Nick start to accept his loved ones back into his life, and are looking forward to seeing how those relationships will work, it ends. I do look forward to other books by this writing team.
Nick comes out to his parents when he is about 16 and things change. He is tortured at school, his own brothers are no better and his dad can't accept that he is gay. So, he asks to move to NY where his Uncle lives. His uncle is also gay, and Nick adapts easily into the home his uncle and his boyfriend provide. The extended family his uncle has created are a haven for Nick.
Unfortunately, a dear friend of his uncle is the victim of the 9/11 bombings and Nick's world is once again disrupted. He quits school, moves out of his uncle's home and gets a job.
The book focuses on Nick and is kind of a coming of age story. Over the course of about a years time, We see Nick find a way to heal himself and allow the people he's always loved to be a part of his life once again.
My only complaint is that the ending felt rushed and abrupt. Just when we see Nick start to accept his loved ones back into his life, and are looking forward to seeing how those relationships will work, it ends. I do look forward to other books by this writing team.
September 20, 2016
I have mixed feelings about this coming of age novel. It’s mostly dark and cynical and only becomes less so toward the end. The protagonist is Nick, a 19 year old gay kid. As he sputters through his life, so does the book, making it hard to keep interested and keep reading. It took me a long time to read this book, mostly because I read other books in between.
I like a lot of the characters, Nick’s coworkers, roommates and uncle’s family and brother start off very two dimensional and eventually get developed. Sadly it takes too much time. The book certainly had a lot of potential, but it both never actually got there, yet where it did go was okay in the end. Here is what I really liked – the book has a way of making you think about it and the story. Bizarre as it sounds, I cared about Nick, yet his melancholy was a downer.
Other books by this author are much better. If you read it, I don’t think your life will be worse off it’s not awful, it’s just not great.
I like a lot of the characters, Nick’s coworkers, roommates and uncle’s family and brother start off very two dimensional and eventually get developed. Sadly it takes too much time. The book certainly had a lot of potential, but it both never actually got there, yet where it did go was okay in the end. Here is what I really liked – the book has a way of making you think about it and the story. Bizarre as it sounds, I cared about Nick, yet his melancholy was a downer.
Other books by this author are much better. If you read it, I don’t think your life will be worse off it’s not awful, it’s just not great.
October 26, 2008
Not nearly as fluffy as I had been lead to believe it would be. In fact, this story of a young gay man and his friends in NYC was, well, touching. Moving, even. I ended up reading it all in an evening, after picking it up on the fly at work - someone else had left it lying about on a desk. There were some shades of Peter Cameron's Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You, though I personally found Beck's book to be more enjoyable, if not better written in a literary sense. My biggest complaint is about the wrap-up scene between brothers at the end: too obvious, too easy, too unrealistic. I could almost see the made-for-tv-movie cameras at the edges of the scene and the boom hanging down above the actors' heads. Other than that, though, I had no big issues.
October 24, 2010
I don't normally read gay themed books, but then I wouldn't label this a gay themed book. Its a character study in which the lead character, 19 year old Nick happens to be gay. He's a likeable enough character. What caught my eye when I was browsing this book before buying it was a line from the first few pages, maybe it was the opening line, something about Nick stepping into a puddle of slush and how NYC can be harsh. It's been a few years since I read it, but I remember the feel of that line, I felt like I was there on that street corner, that's because the book was well written, the lead character and the scenery were well developed.
www.doover1.blogspot.com - check it out for a preview of the book "Do Over"
www.doover1.blogspot.com - check it out for a preview of the book "Do Over"
January 31, 2013
Again, where books like this when I was growing up??? This books captures what it's like to be 19 and finding your way anywhere let alone in newly post 9/11 NYC. I loved that the main characters sexuality is a given to him not a struggle--that relationship issues are ones any 19 year old would have. There are a lot of characters and they're all very attactrive and appealling--you want to spend time with them/know more about them. With its almost episodic feel and structure it almost feels like watching a WB show with a gay main character in a really good way.
June 17, 2016
starts slow and a lot of characters in Nick's life, a 19 yr old who has been in NY for 3 years. He has quit school, been fired from his job and has nothing but negative memories of his family life in the mid west, and a lot of angst towards his twin brother, the jock, who failed to defend Nick inside and outside the family. He finds an apartment and 3 room mates and the story becomes more fascinating as he becomes close to them over time, in spite of their idiosyncrasies. An accurate description of a young adult building his gay life in a new city having escaped an unhappy childhood.
November 13, 2012
The story of Nick, a young former art student trying to re-ground himself, rediscover his artistic drive and make his way in the world after 9/11 shook his world and life. This is not about self-pity, it is about self-awareness and coming to terms with one's flaws as well as one's strengths. Great storytelling.
December 13, 2013
This was a good coming of age story set in New York. At first I wasn't sure how well I'd like it, but as the characters grew and developed it was really great. There were lots of fascinating secondary characters who made the book a lot more interesting. The main character wasn't too likeable at first but he grew on me. Overall a good read.
October 8, 2010
Timothy James Beck is one of my favorite authors, and he definitely didn't disappoint in this novel. It's all about getting out of being invisible to everyone and living your life, and I absolutely adore it.
January 7, 2008
Wondrfully indulgent book.
August 21, 2008
i could associate with this charecters feelings throught the book.. i liked it, this was the first time i had read anything by this author
June 10, 2010
I loved that the writer simply told the story of this young man's life and it was realistic.
July 13, 2011
So many characters, but none of them easy to relate to. I didn't hate this, but I don't remember why I picked it up and I'm still not sure why I finished it - it's an easy read, I guess.
Read
July 4, 2008These are really great beach books.
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