![]() In a telling moment, Nora says, “The war made us older than our parents.” Yale and Fiona, given what they’re going through, know the feeling. Nora’s Paris experiences, interrupted by World War I and the Spanish Flu epidemic, parallel Yale’s and Fiona’s 1980s traumas. She’s especially alert to how “the man who was once perfect for you could become trapped inside a stranger.” ![]() Makkai brings sympathy to these vivid, varied personalities. That seeming novice to the gay scene may just be indulging in a little role play. ![]() That public crusader for safe sex may not be practicing what he preaches. For gay and straight characters alike, AIDS exposes secrets. She gives equal due to these young men’s gallows humor and their sense of being “human dominoes” as the disease spreads. ![]() ![]() Makkai is a wily, seductive writer, whether she’s describing an elderly French journalist (“The kind of woman who seemed made entirely of scarves”) or a man gazing at his lover in bed: “He was soft, as if his skin had never seen the weather, and when a bone - an elbow, a kneecap, a rib - showed through, it was like a foreign object poking at a piece of silk.” ![]()
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