You Are Here: A Memoir of Arrival

by Wesley Gibson

Overview

A wonderfully original tale of the disintegration and mutation of an apparently ordinary American family. — Alison Lurie

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316740845
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	01/07/2004
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.64(d)
Age Range:	13 Years

Editorial Reviews

When 30-something novelist Gibson (Shelter) moves to New York from Virginia, he plans to establish himself as a writer, get a day job and enjoy life in the city he's considered "the sunken treasure I'd been diving for my whole life." Instead, as this enigmatic memoir chronicles, he finds a strangely quiet apartment share, struggles to secure a menial job and rarely touches his computer. He barely sees his roommate, John, "who was as pale and waxy and elongated as a candle," whom he meets through a gay roommate service. But one night, Gibson is "bolted awake" by the sound of John coughing: "It sounded like he was being clawed to death from the inside out." Most of the book-which, although it gives no specific time references, probably takes place within the past 10 years-focuses on Gibson's attempts to help the seriously ill John (he has lung cancer). Using sharp, often witty language, Gibson also expounds on his job at Telesessions, where he facilitates conference calls for doctors; his childhood in the homophobic South; and frequent phone conversations with his friend Jo Ann, who lives in upstate New York. Though Gibson's story has insightful elements, it bogs down occasionally, as when Gibson details his efforts to rescue an obese neighbor from his bathroom. Gibson eventually lands a position teaching writing and searches for a new place to live, relieved to move on, yet aware that sometimes "friends were family, and family were strangers, and you might find yourself helping someone... because you'd been yoked to them by accidents of commerce." (Jan. 7) Forecast: Advertising in the New York Times Book Review and the New Yorker, and author appearances in New York, could help this book gain traction among new Manhattanites. The publisher plans to include a reading group guide in the finished book. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Bright young writer moves from Southern Baptist Virginia to the impious Big City and lands lodgings with roommates, in this latest gay-coming-of-age picaresque. Novelist Gibson (Shelter, 1992) starts in a comic "you-big-silly flick of the hand" mode. The fey humor sticks to the end, but as his memoir progresses it takes on darker tones. Reporting it all to his simpatico lesbian pal Jo Ann, Gibson earns his chops working as a French waiter and a caterer’s guy. Then he moves on to teleconference facilitating and English teaching. The narrative includes a close encounter with a Times Square hustler, a graphic description of a happening involving a fat man wedged on a toilet, a diagnosis of tertiary syphilis (or was it scabies?), hypochondria verging on Münchhausen’s Syndrome, and AIDS, AIDS, AIDS. Gibson’s apartment mate, a mysterious wraith named John, has nightly been retching hideously. John is dying, which is more than a little inconvenient for his two roomies, even though Gibson wants to do the right thing, because John is on the lease alone. Gibson’s witty collage of the Life in New York—making the scene, scouting, dating, working, clawing through an existence—is packaged in acutely smart style and filled with empathy for most. (Well, maybe straights are a bit of an enigma, but there’s empathy aplenty, missy, and don’t you forget it.) Not quite at the high standard set by the likes of Andrew Tobias, this saga will likely still find a comfortable place on the shelf with other popular works of gay lit. The limp-wrist aesthetic lingers, even as Gibson skillfully turns thoughtful, serious, and clever.

Kirkus Reviews