What Becomes of the Brokenhearted

Rating:
Summary: A BOOK YOU DON'T WANT TO PUT DOWN
Review: This is the first E. Lynn Harris book I've read - I TOTALLY ENJOYED IT!! I am always looking for a GOOD book that I just can't put down and this was it. It gave me more of an understanding about the "Gay" life. It also MAKES ME WONDER -ARE THE MEN I SEE EVERDAY THE MEN I THINK THEY ARE?:-) BUY IT!

Rating:
Summary: Romance novel come to life
Review: This was the first book I read by E. Lynn Harris and it will be the last. It reads like a cheap romance novel, all action and trite physical description. There are hundreds of names dropped, many for no reason other than to establish the author has many friends. The author seems to have little insight into his life. He never addresses the real contradiction in his life: from the earliest scenes to the latest, he is blessed with great support, great achievements, and substantial luck, which he consistently fails to make any use of. Where is the person who is so successful at getting jobs and friends, and why is this super salesman spectacularly unsuccessful at even hooking up with anonymous strangers (when others do not seem to have this problem)? In a novel, the character wouldn't make sense, and I couldn't buy him in an autobiography, either. What does he offer in friendship that keeps his friends providing him with housing, money, even a listening ear? Why do people with his resume in hand offer him jobs-do they never check references? When his breakthrough into sobriety and finally writing comes, it seems an random as all the other events in the book, based largely on an unexplained, unexamined connection. There are many compelling questions to answer about homosexuality/bisexuality in the black community-about the process of overcoming early poverty and abuse, about overcoming depression and substance abuse, about friendship and taking chances and following a dream-and none of them are going to be answered by E. Lynn Harris.