Job's year

**From LibraryThing:**

Oliver Jewett, fifty seven, an actor who never quite made it to the top, has reached the point in his life when he considers what he has achieved though his career; and he is not particularly proud of what he finds. He is a strikingly handsome man, and the years have taken nothing away from that, and while he blames part of his failure on his good looks he also acknowledges the fact that he just is not a great actor.

He lives with his lover of ten years, the now thirty two year old Billy, but their relationship is reaching a crisis point, Billy is perhaps more in love with Oliver the actor than Oliver the private person. This year he also reconnects with his sister, five years his senior and crippled since childhood, now an internationality renowned artist; she is terminally ill. But Oliver's dream is to quit acting and buy a local bakery, the bakery owned by the Pfeffer family, now run by the son of Joey Pfeffer who when they were nineteen was one of Jewett's first intimate loves of his youth.

Oliver is an easy going, self-effacing and caring man; a fact which causes others at times to take advantage of him. He is a most appealing character, and while he make mistakes, these are not the frustrating sort that some authors seem to delight in leading their main characters into, but they are mistake with which one can empathise. Job's Year is a leisurely and melancholy tale, but not without its occasional dramas. As we follow Jewett through the year we also gradually piece together his past, his early struggles, his lovers both male and female. Told in twelve chapters, one for each month of the year, in typical Hansen fashion, it has all the Hansen trademarks: set in his beloved California, references to changes not always for the better that time has wrought, handsome older man sought by younger lovers, a main protagonist who loves the finer things of life, and is rich in detail which yet never gets in the way of the story.

It is a most absorbing story, poignant and very moving. While one might feel terribly sad for Jewett's lot, and while he himself perhaps is happily resigned to the whatever might be the outcome, surely only a hard hearted reader will be left unaffected by *Job's Year*.