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Summary: A Gorgeous Exploration of Grief...and moving on
Review: HEAVEN'S COAST is Mark Doty's his first prose book and a stirring and stunning memoir of his year of grief following the death of his lover of a dozen years Wally Roberts. With this book Doty has created a genuine masterpiece. It is a brilliant and accessible memoir conveying sorrow without cliché and making sense of death through the beauty of writing. Death is no longer simply tragic but attains a variety of meanings that result in new levels of acceptance and understanding. His powerful emotional exactitude is culled from a brilliant mastery of language and a precise usage of metaphor. The combination transforms human loss into a redemptive art form. HEAVEN'S COAST is one of the most moving, beautiful, and poignant books to emerge on AIDS and more importantly on loss and grief.
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Summary: this book is not about AIDS
Review: AIDS is a tragedy for the individual who experiences it, and for those who love them. But even if you have suffered at its hands, no-one should let you off the hook when you banalise it like this. 'Heaven's Coast' is over-written, self-important and embarrassing. I can only suppose that those who praise this writer's use of language come from the "more metaphors=more emotion" school of literature he favours, but like all self-indulgent writing, the effect of Doty's style is to cheat the genuine feeling behind it of a distinctive vocabulary, and to cheapen the suffering it depicts. There's something distasteful about watching someone using illness as an excuse to strike postures as hollow and self-regarding as this: 'Is this my work? To point at the world and say: look, see how darkly it sparkles?' From the precious rhetorical question to that faux-profound dark/light inversion, this is a typical instance of the book's extended masterclass in bad writing. If these were the outpourings of someone under the pressure of grief, they might be excusable, but Doty has worked hard to produce writing this overloaded: 'Wild, glimmering, watery horizons of sun, the watchful seals and shimmered flurries of snow seem to me to have more to do with the life of my spirit.' Even a teenager who'd just been taught about assonance and alliteration would balk at that sentence. This book, despite the horrors it sometimes documents, ends up reading like one long, shrill assertion of its own marvellous sensitivity, inviting the reader to congratulate themselves on their special ability to share in it. Sometimes bad writing is also morally questionable, and this is one of those times.
Rating: 
Summary: Not a typical memoir but beautifully written
Review: Doty took us to Heavens coast to expore life and death as his partner Wally dying of AIDS. The story evolves the impact/reaction on the author and Wally by Wally's diagnosis and his worsen illness. It also covers other friends struggling with(but not only limited to) AIDS epedemics. It's a memoir of love, companionship, and of course agony.One doesn't have to be gay or have experienced the loss of loved ones to appreciate this book. Every human being would be touched by the emotions flowing through out the book. The story line is not a typical one, rather, the book is a collection of beautifuly essays or in deed a philosophy book. Doty, a poet, has no doubt mastered the English languish (many times I'd just read out and listen.) I found, however, the book is somewhat hard to read in the begining. Also some details were repeated as if not neatly organized partialy because they were taken from diffent essays. There is not much "being in love" story (I had hoped more) as the auther emphasized on "living in love"(which is equally great). There is no doubt that the book is totaly worth reading and I strongly recommend it to everybody!
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Summary: Boo-hoo is right!
Review: Exactly. Why should I care what some white male does/thinks about getting AIDS? What about African-Americans, other ethnicities, other people besides white males??? Mark Doty is extremely uninspiring, a clueless priviledged white male, who has nothing to tell me. As a feminist, I'm challenging the assumptions about AIDS. This guy ain't, and it's incredible he's won awards for writing this stuff.
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Summary: Heaven's Coast: A very powerful memoir
Review: Heaven's Coast is perhaps the most emotionally powerful book I have ever read. Every page contains a piece of the Author's heart and soul. Especially moving for those who have experienced the loss of a loved one (partner, spouse).
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Summary: Above and beyond the others
Review: I do my best to spread the gospel of Mark Doty's Heaven's Coast. These prose crawled inside to a place normally reserved for very few -- a place so tender that only a love like Mark and Wally's could navigate its way and move me to laugh and cry with Mark. It is a great book, not just about AIDS and Wally living with it and dying of it, but of ILLNESS and how we deal with it. Plainly: isn't it a wonder how deeply we can love?
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Summary: An inspiring "survived by" account
Review: I have never lost anyone I love, and I fear that loss immensely. I often concoct possible life threatening scenarios for my loved ones, trying desperately (and in vain) to feel the pain I would be feel if they were really to occur, stupidly thinking I can somehow prepare myself for the worst. Mark Doty's partner, Wally, tested positive for HIV, and for four years Doty lived with the knowledge of "the worst": someone he loved dearly would soon to die. His memoir, Heaven's Coast, was another scenario for me to rehearse, this time with the aid of someone who actually endured it...and survived. It was helpful to read how Doty made it through those four years, trying "not to let the present disappear under the grief of those disappearances, and the anticipatory grief of a future disappearance." He strives to constantly live in the present, and his memoir takes the reader in it with him, written beautifully, with a thoughtful, poetic quality it, suitable for such a reflective piece. It is honest, heartbreaking and, for me, encouraging. Obituaries often contain what I call a "survived by" line, something I fear being associated with some day. For me, Heaven's Coast is an annotated, engrossing, and promising "survived by" line.
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Summary: Heaven
Review: I have only one thing to say - this is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read, in every sense of the word. Read it.
Rating:
Summary: Heaven
Review: I have only one thing to say - this is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read, in every sense of the word. Read it.
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Summary: Run don't walk to read this..
Review: I loved this book. There are only a handful of writers that are able to write so beautifully, with such solid fluidity. Doty has the ability to create colorful and rich poetic imagery after the sharp edges of loss consume his life. I consistently recommend this book to the romantics that I meet, the ones who appreciate words that are sculpted from the emotional side of being human.
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