Rating: 
Summary: Best novel I've read in years
Review: From the title, which caught me immediately, to the very end, I enjoyed this story. As a southern woman of the same age group, I identified with (and somehow envied) this group of friends who left behind the safety of home to live their own lives. This is an intelligent, well-written, and emotionally involving novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Allan Gurganus is literallly--and literarily--Lionhearted.
Review: I am so bored with the grousing about Allan Gurganus' new book, Plays Well With Others. Let them without talent cast the first stones. As a prose stylist, Allan Gurganus has very few peers writing in the world to day; in fact, if we have a writer since Faulkner who possesses sufficiently strapping shoulders with which to carry the heart & mind & soul of the American south into the rest of the world, it is Gurganus. His genius lies in his reverence for words and the care, confidence and craft with which he shepherds their use, in the expansive breadths of his knowledge, in the seemingly limitless depths of his perception, and in the generosity with which he shares them all.Confederate Widow possesses every novelistic strength of Ulysses, White People is as profound a collection of stories and reminiscences as Dubliners, and Plays Well is as insightful regarding the maturation of an artistic sensibility as Portrait. Just because I couldn't finish Finnegin's Wake, I don't question Joyce's genius; I question my own. Maybe Gurganus' critics should do the same, and let the Big Dog lie.
Rating:
Summary: Well worth the second chance!
Review: I bought this book five years ago with the intention of reading it on a transatlantic flight... well ..When I reached the chapter "Thirty Dildoes" I felt compelled to thumb the pages very quickly as there was a rather prudish lady sat next to me. I judged by the amount of seat squirming that she did not approve of the content of my novel. I quickly popped it back into my carry on bag and read the inflight magazine instead. I forgot about the book until a few weeks ago, when I was looking for something to take away the tedium of a rail journey. I read on, unabashed this time and was delighted by this wonderful narrative. The author's ability to capture the 1980's New York's village lifestyle had me enthralled. The characters were beautifully written "fleshed out " in word. I slowly became friends with Hartley, Robert and Angie and their menagerie of artsy friends. The book is written through Hartley's eyes and as a writer himself he gives us a very endearing account of Grenwich village as a bohemian melting pot of colourful writers, musicians and artists. I particularly enjoyed the witty account of Hartley's first encounter with Angie at the clap clinic. It was a perfect piece of writing where Hartley studies this woman who monopolises the only available public phone. She is unaware that she is being studied while doodling on a wall and using this clinic hallway as if it were her office. This novel gave me a taste of a life I would love to have lived myself had I the resources and the courage to do so at the time. For all you other Hartley wannabes...give this book a chance. It's very amusing yet still manages to deal with the subject of the AIDS pandemic with dignity without being too preachy. I'm glad that I gave this book a second chance and will definately revisit these friends again and again. If you do enjoy it then look out for Felice Picano's "Like people in history". It has been referred to as the gay "Gone with the wind". If you do not enjoy Picanno's book ( and fall in love with Matt Loguidice)you must lack a soul!!
Rating: 
Summary: Difficult and laborous reading
Review: I have to admit - this is my first Allan Gurganus book - and if it were his first - I wouldn't bother with his next. However, his first novel gathered such good reviews - it makes me curious to go buy the "CONFEDERATE" novel and see if it's as difficult and laborous a read as PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS. I myself am tired of all the gay novels telling me how pretty everyone was, how sexy they were, and how much piggy sex was had during the late 70's and early 80's - and now all doomed and dead! What about the average gay guy who lived and died in Indianpolis - yeah - Indianpolis isn't that exciting - but it might make a better story than three boring people in New York who only think of themselves. Mr. Gurganus has left me cold and bored with his new book.
Rating:
Summary: A Tribute to 'Others'
Review: I just recently re=read Gurganus' novel about gay artistic life in the 80's. The first time I read it was before I moved to New york City, this time around it's been three years since coming to fabled Manhatto. Both readings have strangley inspired me- though Hartley Mimms and his pals are doomed, it's their giddy lust for life that you walk away remebering. A note to Mr. Gurganus: Nothing has changed in New York since you've left- the boys are a little more self aware about their posturing, but otherwise come stop by Cafe Figaro anytime.
Rating:
Summary: A book with staying power.
Review: I read this about a month ago, and thought it was okay or slightly better, but in the ensuing weeks I find myself thinking about it more and more. There are scenes and images which have stuck with me and which float, unbidden, to the top of my consciousness. Mostly, though, my thoughts go, again and again, to the closing chapters of the book, which delineate the death of an entire culture, member by member. I though that sections of the book were absolutely harrowing, while others were wonderfully funny. Unlike most books I read these days, this is one I intend to someday read again.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful, not quite perfect
Review: I read this book at the recommendation of a friend, and I now recommend it to many of MY friends. It's artfully crafted, deeply touching, and thoroughly moving. One caveat: Don't be to quick to judge when you start this book. After the opening salvo, the story hangs a bit while the characters get going. Also, the dialogue is at times a bit "precious" and too full of self-absorbed banter. This is, I'm sure, quite intentional. I just wish it didn't tax my patience. Overall, a book that will touch the deepest parts of you and will stand up to repeated readings.
Rating:
Summary: The book I have been waiting for!
Review: I simply loved this book. In addition to telling a wonderful story, Mr. Gurganus moved me deeply with (contrary to what the Kirkus reviewer said) a very unsentimental account of love, loss, caring, responsibility and growing-up. The book begins with an almost unbearably touching, yet nevertheless rioutously funny, prologue and ends with an "appendix" short-story that both allows the reader really to understand and love the protagonist and the author and offers the most encouraging and beautiful conception of "heaven" and the criteria for entrance thereto that I have ever encountered. While I hesitate to categorize "Plays Well With Others" as "gay literature," because I think it is a book to which anyone can relate and by which anyone can be enriched, I must say that it may well be the best book that could be placed in that genre that I have ever read. (Michael Cunningham's "A Home at the End of the World" presents stiff competition.) Of course, the book is about much more than "being gay," but it does present gay psychology and sexuality openly and honestly, but without overemphasizing the purely sexual aspect, as (unfortunately) too many books (e.g., Edmund White's "The Farewell Symphony) do. In all, I enthusiastically recommend this book to anyone who has a heart.
Rating:
Summary: Cried and/or laughed every other page of the last 3 sections
Review: I too have been waiting for this book. I read "Oldest..." and liked it ok. Read "White People" and recommended it to everyone who I thought could appreciate his writing style. Then received "Plays well..." as a Christmas gift from my Mother before I even knew it was out. I finished it today, called my mother and my best friend only to find they had not read it yet. I needed to talk to someone else who read it and this was my only outlet. I am female heterosexual originally from the south. I admit that the first section was hard to get through - maybe too focused on a world to which I have little exposure(young artists and New York as well as the gay community)- but it was worth it to feel the love and pain and joy of the last three (including the appendix)sections. The scene over Christmas with his parents was so real to me I relived many a similar visit home. Mr. Gurganus has a talent of creating characters, emotions, 'terms of endearment' that are, although foreign in so many superficial ways, real in places inside your body (throat, stomach, lungs) that you forgot could even express emotion. I also admit his writing style can be a little challenging, but the beauty of it is that it (lots of parenthetical phrases) is the way I think.
Rating: 
Summary: disappointing -- self-indulgent writing marrs great subject
Review: I too loved Oldest Living Confederate Widow. I felt the man needed a stronger editor. It was overwritten and self-consciously cute -- maybe to try to assuage those uninitiated and possibly disapproving of the lifestyle depicted -- maybe because he was just too close to the subject matter. There's nothing harder than to write about the good times and close friendships and laughing at each other's silly jokes. I was heartily sick of all the characters and actually grateful when the tragedy (AIDS) (over half-way through the book) crept up. I thought, well now he'll get it together. And to a certain extent he did, but not enough. I wanted to be moved by these characters' love for each other and their sorrow and the care they took of each other against very difficult odds. But I was constanly tripped up by Gurganus' too cute overwritten (at least 2 adjectives per noun, never less, often more) repetitive descriptions. I gave it one star because I felt he so did not live up to the potential of the material -- there was a great book in there and he's an excellent writer with an important subject that hasn't yet been done well.
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