Although billed as a novel, it reads as a collection of related stories, repeating at times several key events and revolving around the narrator's friendship with the older Earl, beautifully told in the novella-like chapter Hurricane Weather. Set in rural northern Florida, the theme is loneliness: and specifically an aging gay man's fear of dying alone. While Dancer from the Dance will likely remain his best known work, his latest may in fact be his best. Andrew Holleran has been quietly chronicling American gay life for more than 40 years. The near-universal praise for this book is deserved. The Kingdom of Sand displays all of Holleran’s considerable gifts it’s an elegy to sex and a stunningly honest exploration of loneliness and the endless need for human connection, especially as we count down our days. Holleran’s first novel, Dancer from the Dance, is widely regarded as a classic work of gay literature.
All the while, he shares reflections on illness and death that are at once funny and heartbreaking. He distracts himself with sexual encounters at the video porn store and visits to Walgreens.
Now Earl’s health is failing, and our increasingly misanthropic narrator must contend with the fact that once Earl dies, he will be completely alone. Earl is the only person in town with whom he can truly be himself. For the last twenty years, he has been visiting Earl to watch classic films together and critique the neighbors. With gallows humor, he chronicles the indignities of growing old in a small town.Īt the heart of the novel is the story of his friendship with Earl, whom he met cruising at the local boat ramp. The nameless narrator is a gay man who moved to Florida to look after his aging parents-during the height of the AIDS epidemic-and has found himself unable to leave after their deaths. The Kingdom of Sand is a poignant tale of desire and dread-Andrew Holleran’s first new book in sixteen years. One of the great appeals of Florida has always been the sense that the minute you get here you have permission to collapse.
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