Product Description

Patrick O'Neil is a travel agent who never goes anywhere. His closest confidante, Sharon, is chain-smoking her way to singles hell, passing up man after man. His parents, proprietors of a suburban men's store whose fortunes are sagging more visibly than its customers, can't agree how best to interfere in their sons' lives. And his lover, Arthur (a nice golden retriever of a guy to whom Patrick can't quite commit), wants to cement their relationship by buying a house.

Then a call comes in the middle of another sleepless night. Tony, Patrick's straight-as-an-arrow younger brother, has fallen in love with a beautiful lawyer who is turning him on to...opera. Unfortunately, she's not the woman he's already pledged to marry. Tony's life is a mess. Finally, the brothers have something in common.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #533197 in Books
• Published on: 1993-07-01
• Released on: 1993-07-01
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .83" h x 5.29" w x 8.27" l, .58 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

From Publishers Weekly
This heartbreaking book eloquently depicts the compromises that lovers and families make to keep relationships alive.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
The author of The Object of My Affection ( LJ 3/1/87) returns with an amusing, eccentric collection of dysfunctional middle-class Bostonians. Patrick O'Neil's relationship with lover Arthur "had developed into the kind of benign domestic dependency that takes love for granted and accepts as inevitable a certain level of boredom, discontent and suppressed rage." As the rather predictable plot develops, Patrick's yuppie brother Tony avoids marriage to his childhood sweetheart by having a last fling, and other brother Ryan, recently divorced, feels lonely. Mother and Father O'Neil snipe constantly at their discontented offspring; interactions among the clan make for lots of bitchy lines and great characterizations. Good for expanding gay fiction collections, but not a necessary purchase.
- Kevin M. Roddy, Univ. of Hawaii at Hilo Lib.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
McCauley's funny, engaging, if somewhat meandering, second novel (The Object of My Affection, 1987) explores the dilemma of unfaithful Patrick, who longs to leave his staid lover Arthur even as he signs a mortgage application for a house the two are buying together--a charming Greek Revival cottage bordering a cemetery. Patrick frets about global warming and works as a travel agent in Cambridge, Mass.; Arthur is an even-tempered immigration lawyer whom adoring friends name their children after. Still, Arthur has his faults: ``He wanted to be accepted by me, and everyone else, one hundred percent, even if that meant my sitting quietly in the passenger seat and watching him plow head-on into a sixteen- wheeler.'' Other characters, less interesting and too talky, include Patrick's loud, chain-smoking heterosexual friend Sharon; his unhappily-married parents; older brother Ryan, who lives in the parents' basement and works in the failing family store; younger brother Tony, engaged to one woman and in love with another. Pat is flattered by Tony's incessant phone calls seeking advice, since they'd grown apart after Pat declared he was gay. In Pat's opinion, his parents are ruining his older brother's marriage and pressuring his younger brother into a bad one. One wonders if this is a cautionary tale about interfering too much--or too little. But though tensions build and Pat leaves Arthur, while Tony ties the knot, the effect is one of gentle letdown rather than climax. McCauley's comic timing manifests itself, line by line, but the leisurely pace here fails to deliver the payoff. Still, this light, easy read proves satisfying fare--thanks to deftly drawn characters and their real, if sometimes reluctant, affection for one another. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.