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Average rating4
“A storyteller of refreshing inventiveness and subtlety” (San Francisco Chronicle), Jonathan Ames has won critical raves for this delightful “comedy of impeccable manners with a debauched '90s spin” (Elle). Meet Louis Ives: well-groomed, romantic, and as captivating as an F. Scott Fitzgerald hero. Only this hero has a penchant for ladies clothes, and he's lost his teaching post at Princeton’s Pretty Brook Day School after an unfortunate incident involving a colleague’s brassiere. Meet Henry Harrison: former actor, failed but brilliant playwright, and a well-seasoned escort for New York City’s women of means. He dances alone to Ethel Merman records, second-acts operas, and performs his scrappy life with the dignity befitting a self-styled man of the world. What can this ageless Don Quixote of the Upper East Side have to offer a young gentleman such as Louis? What, indeed. Well, the answer lies somewhere between the needs of an irascible mentor and the education of his eager apprentice...between cocktails on the Upper East Side and an even more intoxicating treat along the secret fringes of Times Square...and between friendship and longing.
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I'm not sure why I let this book keep me away from Tristram Shandy, except that it was much faster to read and easier to follow. This book did not require me to re-read sentences a few times before I understood them. This was light and fun although perhaps longer than it should have been. A lot of the elements in and of themselves were interesting – wanting to be a ‘young gentleman' of a previous era, sexual confusion, having a mentor from whom you hide yourself, etc. – and in combination with early-nineties New York (pre-9/11!), this was a good story, engaging and funny and stuff and stuff. But why did I let it suck me in when I had on hand a literary classic well ahead of its time, as well as many other perfectly readable, short, engaging, and amazing works of literary art? Browsing in libraries can be a terrible thing.