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Onyx
by Felice Picano
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Storyteller: that's Felice Picano's craft, one he's burnished through nearly 20 books in the past quarter century. He entertains, no sure thing in the world of gay lit, and he does so with intelligence, industry and integrity, never better than in "Onyx," a novel of distinctive emotional intensity.
It's 1992. Ray Henriques is nearing middle age, running a satisfying classical music business out of his home, blessed with caring friends, but vaguely out of sorts with his life. His lover of a decade, Jesse, ill with AIDS but still valiantly at work, remains close to his heart. One day he
walks past the eye-level crotch of hunky handyman Mike Tedesco, halfway up a ladder, and surprises himself by flirting audaciously. Soon enough, libido-driven Ray and hormone-high Mike, married with two children but also unsettled in his world, are in Ray's bed, their mutual itchy angsts scratched by sweaty, satisfying sex, with real conversation afterwards. Nothing untoward here; Ray and Jesse appreciate each other's needs.
But that first encounter sets Ray on a path that leads, after Jesse's death, in a totally unexpected direction. Remember, Picano is above all a great storyteller, with a wry take on ways of the human heart and a warm appreciation for the foibles of human nature, and here he's able to render a most implausible series of events perfectly believable. Remember, too, that fact is often stranger than fiction, and there is a strong sense of adapted-from-real-life to this book, even more than in "The Book of Lies," which drew from the era of the short-lived writing group The Violet Quill, and in "Like People in History," which drew broadly from Picano's own early years. Whether it's whole-cloth fiction or embroidered fact, though, "Onyx" is a sizzling read.
-- Richard Labonté
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