Sweetheart

By Peter McGehee

Book Overview

In Boys Like Us, McGehee introduced a wonderfully zany cast of characters living in Toronto, all friends and ex-lovers of Zero McNoo, a gay man from Arkansas. Now one year later, Zero struggles with... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312078633
• ISBN13: 9780312078638
• Release Date: January 1992
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 207 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.8" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

I hope you'll take the time to read the full trilogy. It is part of GLBT history that should not be

Second part of the Peter MgGehee trilogy. I the first book, Boys like us, the author introduced a wonderfully cast of characters living in Toronto, all friends of Zero McNoo, a gay man from Arkansas. Sweetheart picks up their story one year later: November 1989. Randy, Zero's best friend is dead. The opening sentence is: "Randy ashes came today." Zero is the executor of Randy's will and he has to deal with homophobic parents. The strain of the deaths are reflected in a comment David makes to his friend Zero: "Do you ever wonder how many times you'll serve as an executor before someone's doing the job for you. The second part of the book deals with Zero's eccentric Southern family. Both worlds collide when cousin Trebreh (Herbert spelled backwards), the porn star, parks his teenage daughter, Mary Bull with Zero, further complicating an already complex life as Zero tries to balance a budding romance--with Jeff--AIDS activism, and family responsibilities. Doll, Zeros's sister turns thirty and the family gives her an all out party in Little Rock, Arkanas. The party is paid by Zero's mother,Eddie, old flame, Sparky, who is married to another woman. Sparky's wife shows with a gun and all hell breaks lose. With wit and warmth, Zero struggles with sex, love, family politics and friendship in the height of the AIDS epidemic. "Why are we so much more adept at beginnings than endings" comments Zero. "When the moment is gonem it's gone. Snap. No souvenirs, no postcards home. That's it. Finito." Last book, Labor of Love, was written by Mr. McGehhe's lover due to the demise of the author in February of 1991 from complication of HIV/AIDS. I hope you'll take the time to read the full trilogy. It is part of GLBT history that should not be forgotten.

An important moment in the history of AIDS rhetoric(s)

One of the most personal, readable novels about living well in the face of HIV infection and all the changes it brings about in one's life. The companion work to McGehee's "Boys Like us," both of which are important texts in constructing a literary response to the damaging rhetorics of AIDS. This book picks up where "Boys Like us" left off, with Zero MacNoo's ongoing search for authenticity and meaning in the spectre of AIDS. It is a warm, funny, life-affirming work, refreshingly unapologetic and inflinching. The restless Zero (who is "searching for the moment, not a lifetime" [14]) finally finds, in Jeff Lake, the one romantic and sexual partner he has long searched for. "After all," Zero says, "a guy only has so many lifetimes to give" (14). It is, however, Zero's emotional and spirtual journey which is given the greatest weighting. We get the sense that McGehee was a seeker, searching for a new, brave, transnational identity. Returning to Arkansas, Zero stares out the airplane window at the Arkansas River: "It slithers through the landscape of bluffs and pine trees like some kind of prehistoric serpent. I love to stare at it. It hypnotizes me. It gives me a sense of my whole life being one blazing moment" (78). Voyages through time and space are thus evoked as the character travels through his life, with AIDS menacingly looming. Zero goes through life armed with wit and courage, so happiness is always attainable. Love, happiness, and memory are necessary elements in the construction of an AIDS counterliterature. Without this counterliterature, the voices of gay men who died of the disease (McGehee included) are in danger of being erased from history. The characters in McGehee's works still manage to live and love meaningfully despite their HIV status. Testimony means a reconsideration of how we record the history of our culture, and whose stories we weave into the greater tapestry of voices. In the end, Zero's testimony, like McGehee's text, is all that stands between his "self" and oblivion. This is a gentle, funny, and very heart-felt work, and proves without a doubt that McGehee's brilliant voice was silenced way too early.