Praise for

Martin and John

 

 

“It’s an amazing feat for any writer, in particular a male writer, to expose so nakedly the need for closeness with a father that lies underneath a son’s rage . . . In this short book, Dale Peck has managed to pack the density and the depth of a human life. He is a brave and very talented writer.”

—The New York Times

 

“How do you write a novel that describes the impact AIDS has had on you and still take into account all the other people who are suffering the consequences of the disease? Dale Peck has come up with his answer in Martin and John—a book that marks the debut of a remarkably accomplished young writer. In this kaleidoscopic novel, separate stories come together to form a shifting picture of gay life in the time of AIDS . . . [Martin and John] simultaneously reflects one man’s experience and the experiences of many men.”

—Entertainment Weekly

 

“Like the columns describing a medieval cloister—each different, all similar—Dale Peck’s couples may be rich or poor, sophisticated or provincial, but they all know something about homophobia, violence, incest, and the anguish of dying an early death.”

—Edmund White, author of A Boy’s Own Story

 

“Alternative readings are the key to Dale Peck’s aesthetic—one so sophisticated and, for the most part, so masterfully realized that it is hard to believe Peck is only twenty-five. This is his first full-length work but, ingeniously, it functions both as a novel and as a collection of short stories . . . Peck can handle notoriously difficult subjects—AIDS, child abuse and sadomasochistic sex not just explicitly, but with a sincerity free of all melodrama. As he orchestrates a structural puzzle of fictions within fictions, he also moves towards a heartwrending autobiographical truth.”

—The Independent

 

“Dale Peck’s first novel is a wounding, extraordinarily honest story with a promiscuous narrative energy and honed stylistic gift that can only mark the arrival of a prodigious talent.”

—Dennis Cooper, author of Guide

 

“Martin and John could not have been written at any time but now and not by any other writer than Dale Peck. He is that rare phenomenon—an original—and his book is mysterious, solemn and full with feeling.”

—Susan Minot, author of Rapture

 

“Dale Peck’s novel is about the darkness and sexual chaos in the lives of middle-American families, and about love and passion in the midst of plague. From beginning to end, Martin and John is wrenching and unflinching—charged with the exhilarating magic of a bold, new voice.”

—Joyce Johnson, author of Minor Characters

 

“Peck writes so splendidly that it is a pleasure just to keep on reading. By themselves, some of these stories are among the most powerful representations of gay life written . . . An exciting first novel by a 24-year-old author.”

—Library Journal

 

“With this poetic, tightly compressed novel, Peck makes a head-turning debut on the literary scene. It is composed of a feverish sequence of vignettes, which the reader gradually learns are the reminiscences of John, a gay man, as he tries to come to terms with the death of his lover, Martin, from AIDS . . . Subtle but highly charged, the fragments carry the reader continually deeper into human mystery, and what we at first hear as a fugue on the destructive powers of sexual desire evolves rapidly into a lay psalm that proclaims both the necessity of love and its inevitable loss.”

—Publishers Weekly