Rating: 
Summary: A must read!
Review: I have all the respect in the world for Jim Grimsley and his brilliant and satisfying novels. I was in a state of euphoric when I picked up a copy of "Boulevard" and went home and started reading it. I was up until the wee hours making a new friend in Newell. I had fallen in love with him when he first got off the bus in New Orleans. His sense of courage and challenge makes me want to travel to an unknown place and struggle, struggle, struggle. That's what life is all about, anyway. And Grimsley weaves his genius into every page. There are no words to describe how I feel towards Newell, except that I want to meet him and be his friend. He is the most daring and intriguing human being I have ever read about. On the contrary, I was exasperated to read about what Newell ever saw in Jack. What transpires towards the end of the novel makes me, and maybe a lot of other readers, ill at ease. Nevertheless, if you've ever read anything by Jim Grimsley then you'd know what I'm talking about by heartfelt characters and a journey of self-discovery. However, if you have never read anything of Grimsely's, start here. You will embark on a journey of inexplicable greatness.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Up to Par
Review: I loved Grimsley's other novels and could not wait for this one. It started out very well and then it just went off into directions that held little interest. I tried to keep reading, but after a while I just didn't care anymore.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I'm a big fan of Jim Grimsley after having read great books like "Dream Boy" and "Comfort and Joy." There's something very wistful about those books, and you immediately connect with the characters. However, in this book, even after over half the novel, I find myself not caring what happens to anyone in the story. The writing is still nice, but it seems really aimless. If you haven't read a Grimsley novel, I suggest you buy Comfort and Joy.
Rating: 
Summary: A Busy Boulevard of Unbroken Hope
Review: I've been a huge fan of Jim Grimsley ever since I first discovered Dream Boy while in a bookstore one day looking for nothing yet somehow finding everything. His writing is so simple, yet quite moving. His characters are quite detailed, and you find yourself caring about what happens to them quite quickly. The same is for his latest, Boulevard. Again, the writing is intricate in detail and easy to follow. I read over half of it in the first setting. I found myself caring very deeply about what happened to Newell as he began to discover himself on the streets of New Orleans. I felt like I was right there with him, since I had visited before and knew the streets and places quite well. However, the editorial reviews spoil the story for you. I rather enjoy the story being as simple as it is, but I knew what was going to happen to Newell right from the very beginning. I also didn't enjoy the change in the point of view in the last parts of the book. I wanted less of those characters, and more of Newell. Newell's parts were much more detailed, and I cared about him much more. The other characters refer to Newell and offer their opinions of him, but I found myself missing him while reading their thoughts and pages. Kudos to Jim for another great work, but I think his better reads lie within the shorter stories with less characters.
Rating:
Summary: I liked it.
Review: I've read all of Jim Grimsley's books and my favorite is "My Drowning." His latest book is called "Boulevard" and, while not his best, is certainly worth reading and should interest those who have already read and liked some of his earlier work. I think it is the best (or anyway the one I like best) of his "gay-themed" novels. Jim Grimsley takes what could have been a tired theme (an innocent young man in the big city in the anything-goes 1970s) and makes it fresh and compelling--interesting from start to finish.
Rating:
Summary: Superb look at the gay scene
Review: In 1978 Newell leaves his hometown of Pastel, Alabama for New Orleans where he wanders the streets until he stops at a store intriguingly named Hendeman's Rare and Used to learn what they sell and to borrow a phone book. Newell mentions the YMCA and the woman, as handsome as a man, Louise Kimbro likes his look and offers him a room, which he takes. Broke, Newell obtains a busboy job at the nearby gay restaurant, which he loses when he rejects the manager's advances. His appearance enables him to score a new job at an adult bookstore.
The job lasts more than just a cup of soup and soon Newell explores the city. He begins to meet other males and hooks up with his boss who introduces him to the drug scene. Eventually his baby face and naive demeanor become the target of a nasty gay person who plans to teach Newell the "finer" things in life.
BOULEVARD is an insightful look at the single's gay scene in New Orleans through the eyes of the lead character and the cast that supports his urbanization. The story line is insightful and interesting and worth the read for those who want a different type of character study. However, the problem with this powerful relationship drama resides with Newell, whose ability to attain what he needs instantly takes away from the depth of observing an ingenuous newcomer struggling to adapt to a "foreign" lifestyle. Jim Grimsley's tale is actually carried by the support ensemble. Harriet Klausner
Rating: 
Summary: Lost in the Fog
Review: It's an old story: Näif from the country comes to the big wicked city and is simultaneously absorbed and victimized by his new-found 'friends'. Grimsley's protagonist, Newell, comes to New Orleans in 1976 from Pastel, Alabama with little money and fewer clues. Unconsciously channeling Blanche Dubois, he finds a few kind strangers to rely on and he's on his way to becoming the freshest streetmeat in the Quarter. Grimsley certainly captures the eternal ambience of New Orleans and the cruisey unfettered abandon of the pre-plague era. Sounds good so far. Alas, the ambience and the oh-so-typical characters start chewing up the scenery. Newell's story is overwhelmed by irrelevant, if well-drawn, detours into the lives of the bit players. We get far deeper into the head of a quasi-transsexual that Newell barely knows than we ever get into Newell himself. Newell has his first boyfriend and then the relationship withers, without much insight why until very late in the book. Despite the blurbs to the contrary, there is nothing about the leather scene of mid-70s New Orleans in this book. One psychopath doesn't make a culture.
This book started out with all the right ingredients; Grimsley's true-life experience in New Orleans and a John Kennedy Toole-ish ear for dialog. Sadly, it loses its way, meandering through the heads of everyone but the central character. Finishing the book, the reader will be as clueless and lost as poor Newell.
Rating:
Summary: Crazy Quilt of a Book
Review: Jim Grimsley writes well - WINTERBIRDS, COMFORT AND JOY, DREAMBOY all attest to that. His way with language is sure, his insights into the minds of his variously troubled characters is on target. For this reader BOULEVARD does not slip into his usual category of novel development. This novel is more four novellas loosely joined. Yes, he once again has been able to conjure up a credible, likeable main character in Newell - the too often portrayed kid from the country who enters the city of evil and is consumed by it. As long as that narrative stays on course this novel reads well, if tired. It is the suppporting cast that begs question as to relevance. Instead of being additive to the narrative each of the other characters tends to a story within a story. Interesting people, yes, but tangential instead of integral. But all novelists are allowed an aside now and then, a different turn similar to an olio act on the old stage, placed as comic relief for serious dramas. Grimsley does capture a seedy stench of the endless day/night called New Orleans. He understands the South and furthers the Tennessee Williams flavours. We all await his next novel, as surely this outing is just a out-of-town tryout for what he really is capable of writing.
Rating:
Summary: Grimsley pulls off another great novel.
Review: Jim Grimsley's fifth novel, Boulavard, is the story of Newell, a young handsome gay man setting off into the big city of New Orleands to start a new life. At first Newell is sort on cash but ends up with an apartment and job at a restaruant. Only when the manager, Curtis, tries to make a move on Newell and when Newell rejects he is fired. But with some luck he starts a job at a porn shop complete with dirty magaz and explict gay films. Newell falls in love with his new job and makes friends along the way. Henary, a chubby guy who loves sex, Mac the store owner, Miss Shopia a transexual with an enteresting self image, Jake, Louise, and last Mark a druggie who becomes Newlls boyfriend. Yet when things begin to seem perfect for Newll, he is shown the more darker side of city and learns that sometimes friends are not always what they seem.
The liked this book, plus Im a MAJOR Jim Grimsley fan, I found this started out real well with realsitic characters and descripties of the city you can almost feel, but the end was way to dark and despresing for me. But still the writing is fantastic. If you want a gay love story with a happy ening and fantaic plot, buy Grimsley's last novel, Comfort & Joy. Also cheak out Grimsleys "Dream Boy". But if your a Grimsley fan a can handle a little drama then this is the book for you!
Rating:
Summary: Yet another small-town-boy-meets-big-city
Review: Since the early 1970s, hundreds (perhaps thousands) of novels have been written with the same basic plot: a young and naive man, graced with wide-eyed innocence and (always) extremely good looks, arrives in a big city from a small town, realizes his gay sexual awakening, and spirals downward into an underground filled with debauchery, danger, and bad music. This territory has been mined so often (and continues to dominate the debut efforts of many up-and-coming novelists) that established writers dare to trespass in this realm only if they could deliver something unique. Unfortunately, "Boulevard" is anything but. Grimsley is a confident writer whose prose is unadorned and meticulous, but his writing can't save the hackneyed plot. The novel's central character, Newell, leaves small-town Alabama, and the novel's first page (correction: the first sentence!) describes him getting off the bus in New Orleans in 1976. This B-novel cliche is followed by 120 pages of formula--first time going to a gay bar, first sniff of amyl nitrate, first joint, first visit to a pornographic bookstore (where Newell ultimately lands a job), first sexual encounter, etc. In addition, there are flaccid descriptions of famous French Quarter landmarks that could have been lifted from Fodor's. The prose here is so detached, so cynical, so clinical that it conveys no emotional impact: at one point, Newell reflects on his first night of drinking and dancing as a "nice evening" of "pleasant places"--an impression that the previous twenty pages absolutely does not convey. It's hard to say if Grimsley means to suggest that Newell is a vapid reporter of his so-called life or if he means to condemn the excesses of gay life in New Orleans. After this first chapter, "Boulevard" takes a sharp turn and hints at what this novel could have been. Grimsley shifts the story's style and point of view: first to Miss Sophia, an older, schizophrenic transsexual who works with Newell in the bookstore, then to Mark, Newell's drug-addled boyfriend, and a final chapter (as well as a coda of sorts) that, with whiplash rapidity, switches perspectives among the several characters introduced throughout the book. Interspersed is a journal written by a nineteenth-century neighbor of a notorious woman who imprisoned and tortured her slaves. As others have noted, the chapter about Miss Sophia seems entirely out of place in this novel, but I thought it daring and believable; on its own, it would have made a great short story or the kernel of another novel altogether. As a whole, however, these last three chapters don't attempt to make the characters more believable (they certainly don't illuminate the reasons for Newell's sudden downfall and his equally sudden epiphany at the end of the book), and they tantalize the reader with the silhouette of an entirely different--and possibly better--novel.
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