Late in the Season (Hardcover)

Picano has the innate ability to create a world where the reader is able to become part of the action or at least the landscape. I really enjoy his writing style. It's not formal and yet it isn't as hackneyed as, say Stephen King. Picano's style is such that the message he intends to convey is never overpowered by the writing itself. Reading a Picano book is like settling down for a long conversation with a good friend.

This is a book about indiscretions relating to a long term relationship, but with a female being the third party. Working on a now somewhat typical situation of: married couple, man cheats on wife with another man. This is two men as a couple with one of them cheating on the other with a woman.

I think you'll enjoy the differences and the nuances that Picano brings to the table here.

Take a chance on this book and see if this quick read isn't worth the time. I know I loved it.

Jonathan and Daniel are in their thirties and have been lovers for seven years, and are both creative professionals. They have a co-op on Central Park West and a summer home on Fire Island. Jonathan gets along well with Daniel's exwife and their two sons, who marched with them in the Gay Pride Parade. They have everything. What more could they possibly want out of life?

Daniel gets a job in London that takes him away for a month. Enter, Stevie, who comes out to Fire Island to sort our her life and her crises, at the age of 18. Her parents' house is the one nearest the lovers' home. Stevie is not sure whether to go back to school, to stick with her current boyfriend, etc. She is independent and does not want to follow the dictates her parents undoubtedly have planned for the rest of her life. A hurricane prompts a scared Stevie to seek emotional shelter at the lovers' home. She immediately falls for Jonathan, for his body and for his mind. Picano shows the depth and fertility of her young mind, waiting to experience things on her own terms. Picano also shows his insight into not just adult relationships but the minds of children, as Jonathan's children stay with him for a few days.

Picano also writes in a nonlinear way that can be confusing if you are used to straight linear storytelling, but it works more than it jars. His exploration of the unspoken is powerful--looking at the network of unasked questions between lovers in the nascent stages of a relationship, the wisdom that comes with age, and the excitement that accompanies discoveries about oneself. His imagery is also powerful--it's hard to forget the pair of dead creatures, the crab holding a monarch butterfly in its claw.

The novel was written in 1981, giving the novel an unintentional irony as it was probably the last whole year in which the sexual revolution was enjoyed fully, before AIDS threw the jet engine of gay liberation into a whole new trajectory, when the idea of personal choices seemed absolute and limitless.