Synopses & Reviews
Review
“A searingly honest portrait of love under fire, a fearless exploration of what it means to be an adult, a couple, a family. It is a story for our time.”—Jennifer Haigh, author of Faith
Review
“So many different relationships are put to the test in Michael Lowenthal’s thought-provoking novel—not only the bond at the heart of the book between two gay men and the Brazilian woman acting as their surrogate mother, but also the bond between husbands and wives, between siblings, between aging parents and their adult children. The Paternity Test is a complex, emotionally satisfying, and thoroughly engaging story.”—Tom Perrotta, author of The Leftovers and Little Children
Review
“A good, old-fashioned page-turner and a sophisticated look at the mysteries of long-term love and the convoluted reasons for wanting a child. Lowenthal writes with intelligence and passion and made me care a great deal about the fates of his flawed, fascinating characters.”—Stephen McCauley, author of Insignificant Others
Review
“Michael Lowenthal’s new novel deftly and wisely explores the various ways families are formed, altered, and destroyed by charting the vagaries and exigencies of two marriages. I loved the complicated, compelling characters all of whom come vividly alive in the beautifully evoked Cape Cod setting.
The Paternity Test is a riveting and wonderful book.”—Peter Cameron, author of
Coral Glynn and
Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to YouReview
“The Paternity Test is an exuberant book—a feat, considering how thoroughly Michael Lowenthal ransacks the human condition for its enduring weaknesses and inevitable disappointments. Yet he manages this with such warmth and wit, bringing to his disparate, often clashing band of characters so much compassionate intelligence, that in the end we can’t help rooting for each one to find happiness—even as we come away with a clearer perception of how rightly varied their different versions of happiness may be.”—Leah Hager Cohen, author of The Grief of Others
Review
“If, as Marshall McLuhan once taught us, the medium is the message, then Derfner’s medium—this lovely, discursive amalgamation of wit and smarts—is indeed his message about how to stay happy, sane, and honest in whatever situation one finds oneself in.”—Philip Gambone, author of Travels in a Gay Nation: Portraits of LGBTQ Americans
Review
“Moving seamlessly from the personal to the historical to the political, Joel Derfner meditates with wit, insight, and even-handedness on the realities of marriage—his and everyone’s. His story is not only deftly placed in the context of the broader fight for marriage equality, but is also a powerful tool in that fight. Mainly because it’s so funny.”—David Javerbaum, former head writer for The Daily Show
Review
“Derfner is an engaging storyteller, and while his sense of humor is ever-present, he never lets it diminish or undermine his discussions of the book’s more serious subjects. This is a book that is more about reality than reality television.”—
Lambda LiteraryReview
“[Derfner’s] observations about the implications of [two weddings] are infused with the perfect mix of serious scholarship, self-effacing humor, and humility.”—
Huffington PostReview
“It’s a page-turner thanks to its realistic characters and a situation that might hit close to home for some.”—
The AdvocateReview
“Never in a hurry,
The Paternity Test starts out at a slow and gentle trot but works up to [a] brisk pace and, in time, to a can’t-look-away ending that will leave readers feeling both shaken and pensive.”—
The Gay and Lesbian ReviewReview
“This is an enjoyable, thoughtful look at marriage, wrapped in wry humor with a few eyebrow-raisers to make things interesting. If you’re a softie for a boy-meets-boy story, a lover of how-we-met tales, a twitterpated romantic, you’ll want it now. For you,
Lawfully Wedded Husband will be a nice surprise.”—
LGBT WeeklySynopsis
Having a baby to save a marriage—it’s the oldest of clichés. But what if the marriage at risk is a gay one, and having a baby involves a surrogate mother?
Pat Faunce is a faltering romantic, a former poetry major who now writes textbooks. A decade into his relationship with Stu, an airline pilot from a fraught Jewish family, he fears he’s losing Stu to other men—and losing himself in their “no rules” arrangement. Yearning for a baby and a deeper commitment, he pressures Stu to move from Manhattan to Cape Cod, to the cottage where Pat spent boyhood summers.
As they struggle to adjust to their new life, they enlist a surrogate: Debora, a charismatic Brazilian immigrant, married to Danny, an American carpenter. Gradually, Pat and Debora bond, drawn together by the logistics of getting pregnant and away from their spouses. Pat gets caught between loyalties—to Stu and his family, to Debora, to his own potent desires—and wonders: is he fit to be a father?
In one of the first novels to explore the experience of gay men seeking a child through surrogacy, Michael Lowenthal writes passionately about marriages and mistakes, loyalty and betrayal, and about how our drive to create families can complicate the ones we already have. The Paternity Test is a provocative look at the new “family values.”
Synopsis
Having a baby to save a marriage--it's the oldest of clich s. But what if the marriage at risk is a gay one, and having a baby involves a surrogate mother?
Pat Faunce is a faltering romantic, a former poetry major who now writes textbooks. A decade into his relationship with Stu, an airline pilot from a fraught Jewish family, he fears he's losing Stu to other men--and losing himself in their "no rules" arrangement. Yearning for a baby and a deeper commitment, he pressures Stu to move from Manhattan to Cape Cod, to the cottage where Pat spent boyhood summers.
As they struggle to adjust to their new life, they enlist a surrogate: Debora, a charismatic Brazilian immigrant, married to Danny, an American carpenter. Gradually, Pat and Debora bond, drawn together by the logistics of getting pregnant and away from their spouses. Pat gets caught between loyalties--to Stu and his family, to Debora, to his own potent desires--and wonders: is he fit to be a father?
In one of the first novels to explore the experience of gay men seeking a child through surrogacy, Michael Lowenthal writes passionately about marriages and mistakes, loyalty and betrayal, and about how our drive to create families can complicate the ones we already have. The Paternity Test is a provocative look at the new "family values."
Synopsis
Celluloid Activist is the biography of gay-rights giant Vito Russo, the man who wrote The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies, commonly regarded as the foundational text of gay and lesbian film studies and one of the first to be widely read. But Russo was much more than a pioneering journalist and author. A founding member of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and cofounder of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), Russo lived at the center of the most important gay cultural turning points in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. His life as a cultural Zelig intersects a crucial period of social change, and in some ways his story becomes the story of a developing gay revolution in America. A frequent participant at zaps and an organizer of Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) cabarets and dances which gave the New York gay and lesbian community its first social alternative to Mafia-owned bars Russo made his most enduring contribution to the GAA with his marshaling of Movie Nights, the forerunners to his worldwide Celluloid Closet lecture tours that gave gay audiences their first community forum for the dissection of gay imagery in mainstream film. Biographer Michael Schiavi unravels Vito Russo s fascinating life story, from his childhood in East Harlem to his own heartbreaking experiences with HIV/AIDS. Drawing on archival materials, unpublished letters and journals, and more than two hundred interviews, including conversations with a range of Russo s friends and family from brother Charlie Russo to comedian Lily Tomlin to pioneering activist and playwright Larry Kramer, Celluloid Activistprovides an unprecedented portrait of a man who defined gay-rights and AIDS activism.
Schiavi tells a compelling story in this biography from his re-creation of life on the streets of East Harlem and in Greenwich Village of the 1960s and 1970s to the way he conveys Russo s excitement about his film research and popular education to his account of the AIDS years in New York City. John D Emilio, Italian American Review
In Schiavi s] hands Russo s life is both fascinating in its own right and a window into a larger milieu of activism during two critical decades. Italian American ReviewBest Special Interest Books, selected by the American Association of School Librarians
Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the Public Library Reviewers
Finalist, Gay Memoir/Biography, Lambda Literary Awards
Finalist, Over the Rainbow Selection, American Library Association"
Synopsis
When Joel Derfner's boyfriend proposed to him, there was nowhere in America the two could legally marry. That changed quickly, however, and before long the two were on what they expected to be a rollicking journey to married bliss. What they didn't realize was that, along the way, they would confront not just the dilemmas every couple faces on the way to the altar—what kind of ceremony would they have? what would they wear? did they have to invite Great Aunt Sophie?—but also questions about what a relationship can and can't do, the definition of marriage, and, ultimately, what makes a family. Add to the mix a reality show whose director forces them to keep signing and notarizing applications for a wedding license until the cameraman gets a shot she likes; a family marriage history that includes adulterers, arms smugglers, and poisoners; and discussions of civil rights, Sophocles, racism, grammar, and homemade Ouija boards—coupled with Derfner's gift for getting in his own way—and what results is a story not just of gay marriage and the American family but of what it means to be human.
About the Author
Michael Lowenthal is author of three previous novels: The Same Embrace, Avoidance, and Charity Girl, which was a New York Times Book Review “Editors’ Choice” title, a Washington Post “Top Fiction of 2007” selection, and a Book Sense Top Twenty Pick. He is a core faculty member in Lesley University’s MFA program in creative writing. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1 Saying Yes 2 Researching Family Marriage Traditions 3 Deciding on Living Arrangements 4 Dealing with the Legal Business 5 Dealing with the Legal Business, Take Two 6 Planning the Ceremony 7 Taking Stock of the Relationship 8 Taking Care of Last-Minute Details 9 Getting Married 10 Living Happily Ever After Epilogue Appendix: A Brief and Highly Biased Legislative History of American Marriage Equality with Respect to Sexuality Acknowledgments