For ten years, critics and readers have been eagerly anticipating the next novel from Tom Spanbauer, one of the most brilliant, inventive writers in America today. In June Grove Press will publish In the City of Shy Hunters, Spanbauer's most ambitious work to date. Set against the stark urban landscapes of Manhattan in the 1980s, the novel offers a vivid portrait of New York's fascinating demimonde of junkies and drag queens on the verge of its collapse, just as AIDS is starting to decimate the city's gay population. In the City of Shy Hunters opens in 1983, when William Parker, Spanbauer's most memorable and winning character yet, moves from Jackson Hole to Manhattan, desperate to escape the provincialism of the small western towns in which he has spent his entire life. Impotent, afflicted with a stutter, and struggling with his sexuality, Will is shy and insecure. In New York he finds himself surrounded for the first time by people who understand and celebrate his quirks and flaws. As he slowly learns to accept himself, he becomes wrapped up in one of the most unforgettable romances in recent literature, a love affair with a volatile, six-foot-five African-American drag queen and performance artist named Rose. But even as he grows close to Rose and the others, Will must watch as they are taken from him as AIDS grows from a rumor into a full-scale epidemic. Meanwhile, tension is also mounting between the police and the squatters in his local park -- until a vicious riot breaks out, providing Will with an opportunity for a heroic, transcendent act that will leave readers shaken, fulfilled, and changed.
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From Publishers Weekly
An expertly drawn, starkly authentic, early-1980s Manhattan provides the setting for this sprawling novel by Spanbauer (The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon). It tells the story of Will Parker, a young man from Jackson Hole, Wyo., who comes to the "Wolf Swamp" of New York in search of his boyhood first love, Charlie. After Will secures a seedy apartment, a bevy of tough, typecast but blissfully genuine New Yorkers immediately materialize. Among them are drug-addled Ruby and her Indian sidekick, True Shot; Fiona, the tenacious waitress who robustly trains Will at his new restaurant job; and "Shakespearean drag queen" and upstairs neighbor Rose, with whom he falls in love. But while dramatic temperaments and sequined wardrobes are being sorted out, AIDS, gay fiction's great leveler, has already begun claiming victims. Spanbauer's rapid-fire narration and clipped sentences generate a surprising amount of tension and gritty emotion, as does his vibrant, dead-on dialogue and keen sense of place. The high points come along the trajectory of Will's awakening sense of self, first when Rose drags him to his first Gay Pride parade and then, as years pass and the plague intensifies, when he witnesses the sudden death of friends. This is a big, brazen, histrionic work of fiction, one that pays respectable, if unsentimental, homage to a devastating period in gay history. However, the overstuffed plot crammed with a swirling pageant of madcap characters (even a dance-floor cameo by Elizabeth Taylor) and a brewing imbroglio concerning squatters rights may exhaust readers before the epic tome reaches maximum velocity. (June)Forecast: Spanbauer fans will expect a more cohesive effort, but this is a fitting opus for Gay Pride Month. The book's striking turquoise cover art and Spanbauer's name in red will attract readers' attention, as will a 14-city author tour.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
One can't help being leery of this latest work from Spanbauer (The Man Who Fell in Love With the Moon, LJ 10/1/91). Is it just another AIDS story concerning the early plague years? But after a few pages one realizes that it is not. Will Parker moves from Idaho to Manhattan in search of himself and his childhood best friend (and first sexual partner). Will isn't dumb, but he isn't educated either, and he lands a crummy job as a waiter and an even worse apartment. His new family of friends more than make up for this, and Will sets out to find out about life. Just as everything seems to be settling into something comfortable, he begins to lose friends and co-workers to drugs and AIDS. Unlike other "early AIDS" novels, this one acknowledges that AIDS touches all classes, races, religions, and sexual orientations. Excellent characters (real New Yorkers), great writing, and a new twist on an over-used plot recommend this book for most libraries, though some readers might want a more conventional ending. T.R. Salvadori, Margaret E. Heggan Free P.L., Hurfville, NJ
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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First Sentence
The airplane landed at La Guardia, August 3, 1983. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt
The airplane landed at La Guardia, August 3, 1983. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
Format:Paperback
I love Tom Spanbauer's narrative voice. I read Man Who Fell in Love With the Moon, and was frustrated as heck trying to get through the first half. After a while, he grew on me. Before I knew it I was in love with his style.
I won't comment much on the story line, but reading of this author is a great great experience. Give it time, be patient, read it to the end, and fall in love with his language.
Format:Hardcover
Spanbauer's first effort in a decade follows the incomparable and lyrical "Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon"--a novel that deserves its cult status. The best elements of his preceding work are here--Native American mysticism, elegant prose, bawdy humor--along with a seething anger reminiscent of David B. Feinberg and the neurotic cosmopolitanism of Spalding Gray.
The basic story combines two narratives that have been told many times before: rural boy comes to New York and confronts the fact that he is gay; a group of friends live through the early years of the AIDS epidemic. There are some wonderful moments when the Idaho-bred naivety of the lead character, William Parker, meets New York's in-your-face honesty. In particular, the chapter describing his first day on the job in a restaurant is relentlessly hilarious. (A personal note: I moved to New York from the Northwest the same month and year as Parker did. Manhattan was certainly a different place then, and Spanbauer captures perfectly the city's grittiness.)
Living in New York during the 1980s was at times certainly like living in a war zone, especially for those of us who lost (and are still losing) so many friends to AIDS. While Spanbauer's portrait of New York City is brutally on-target, his plot and characters never seem quite right. Like David Feinberg, Spanbauer can't contain his anger; his book boils in its hostility toward the Reagans, the Church, gentrification, and other all-too-easy targets, and he overstates his tirades to the point of absurdity. (A vengeful crime directed at "Cardinal O'Henry" on the steps of St. Patrick's Cathedral is exceptionally silly.) And, like Spalding Gray, Spanbauer seems more interested in breaking taboos than in exploring their impact on his characters or tying them into his plot. For example, an uncomfortably explicit account of incest does not in any way contribute to the development of the novel's character or story; it reads like an appended scene hoping to equal the shock value of his previous novel. He is often so busy brewing these episodes that he ultimately fails to make his characters and their actions coherent or convincing; without exception, everybody in the novel either goes crazy or dies. Five hundred pages later, the number of loose ends and pointless incidents defy counting.
Spanbauer is undoubtedly one of the best stylists writing "gay fiction" today. But, even taking into account its mystical themes and tragic events, this novel as a whole strains authenticity.
Format:Paperback
This is the long-awaited new novel by Tom Spanbauer, author of The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon, a novel which got me into semi-deep trouble when I selected it for a book discussion group once. Spanbauer is just NOT an easy author. Not for suburban matrons, no, no, no... Definitely a stylistic challenge (there are no quotation marks anywhere, so you have to parse it out in your head as you read) and the material and setting have certainly been used before (the joys and agonies of New York City at the beginning of the Age of AIDS), but there's a definite attraction meshed in with all its difficulties. The flashbacks to the narrator's strange, abusive childhood in Idaho are lovely and touching, and the characters are nothing if not memorable---performance artists, homeless people, wannabees and waiters. There are multitudinous references to Native American and Western American culture---Stranger in a Strange Land goes 80's, told in a late 90's style---which inform and propel the narrative and the characters' motivations.
It's not like anything all that stellar actually happens---Will is looking for a childhood friend who got a scholarship and moved to NYC years before---and his quest is filled with blind alleys and, of course, with self-discovery. There's a good deal of violence and queasy-making descriptions of edgy sexual encounters and acres and acres of humankind's-inhumanity-to-humankind, but there's also a warped beauty to the whole thing and moments of sincere love. Imagine Tales of the City directed by Sam Peckinpah in a benevolent mood...
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4.2 out of 5 stars
Most recent customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Love it or hate it
Something like a mixture of Dancer from the Dance, Huckleberry Finn, and Gravity's Rainbow, this book is not going to be for everyone. Read more
Published on Oct 5 2001 by Garley
4.0 out of 5 stars
A vibrant story - full of life and death
We are introduced to Will Parker, boy from Idaho, as he journeys to the Wolf Swamp (Manhattan) in search of a lost love. Read more
Published on Aug 6 2001 by Kimberley Mitchell
1.0 out of 5 stars
A Slow Go
In this nearly 500 page book, Tom Spanbauer appears to leave no thought unexpressed. The descriptions of the characters' dress, of places and things mundane lard the tale like... Read more
Published on July 31 2001
2.0 out of 5 stars
Writing style is horrible.
This book is barely readable. It have a lot of run on sentences. The style of writing distracts the reader from the story line. I can't get into the book at all.
Published on July 20 2001
5.0 out of 5 stars
Just Perfect
To paraphrase William Parker, the narrator of this amazing new novel, You're going this way, something happens, then you're going that way. Read more
Published on Jun 14 2001 by Stephen McLeod
5.0 out of 5 stars
E-X-C-R-U-C-I-A-T-I-N-G
Readers who have already experienced The Man Who Fell in Love With the Moon do not need to be told that Tom Spanbauer can write a stunning and excruciating book. Read more
Published on Jun 5 2001 by Becky J. Bigley
5.0 out of 5 stars
Tom Spanbauer is one of the greatest living story-tellers!
I waited, and waited, and WAITED for the release of this, Tom Spanbauer's third novel (all good things to those who wait!). Read more
Published on Jun 4 2001 by MrBlisster
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