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"Julie Jaffe carried my soul in his character, and let me not be invisible, let me be present.

A little bit of me was there, and it opened a door for me as a reader. Julie Jaffe carried my soul in his character, and let me not be invisible, let me be present. In this complex, overblown swirl of a novel, one small but significant gay voice made it easier for me to care about everybody else. But it was also wonderful for me because the treatment of the gay adolescent, Julius (called Julie or Jules), was handled with such tenderness, respect, delicacy and love. I was on the side of loving the book, because the language and the humor were great (for me). Titus is a 14-year-old black straight kid with whom Julius is openly in love.Īnd Chabon works these three pairs in an epic, wry, baroque manner that will either enthrall you or annoy the crap out of you. Nate and Archy run a vintage vinyl record shop Aviva and Gwen are midwives Julius is Nate and Aviva's 14-year-old awesomely geeky and totally gay son. The story includes lots of secondary characters who play important roles - but it revolves about three interconnected couples: Nate and Aviva, a white Jewish couple Gwen and Archy, a black couple and Julius and Titus. That in itself is sort of ballsy for a white author. Which brings me to Michael Chabon's "Telegraph Avenue." This book is set in a mostly African American world of Oakland, California, in the late 1990s.

Why? Because I find a quirk of my advanced middle-age is that I really don't want to read anything without a gay character. On the other hand, I have found it sometimes difficult to read the books we all vote on (we get three choices for each month, majority rules).

Yikes.īut I have found that I enjoy these straight guys, who are cool and non-homophobic (and we're all parents and suburbanites, so I'm not that exotic). As it turns out, I am not only the second oldest man in the group, but one of only two gay men of the dozen who signed on. So, why am I writing about a non-gay book? Well, I belong to men's book group, which I joined assuming that since a gay friend organized it, it would be a gay men's book group.