Harlan's Race

Rating:
Summary: A Nice Follow Up
Review: "Harlan's Race" doesn't feel as much a sequel, as a continuation. The book picks up right where the "Front Runner" left off, with Billy Sive being murdered at the Olympic Games, and it's aftermath.I was glad I had re-read "...Runner" before I started this because it helped keep the characters fresh in my mind. Nell Warren succeeds in keeping Harlan's voice a barometer of the changing times as the seventies gives way to the somewhat more tolerant 80s.The backbone of the book is really a mystery novel with an apparent accomplice in Billy's murder still loose and aiming at Harlan. I thought for the most part this was successful although the identity of the mystery person began to be telegraphed towards the end which took some suspense out of it.My only other slight disappointment with the book was the leaping of years towards the end to bring the story closer to the present. Knowing this book may be part of a total of four books, I almost wish she'd taken more time and detailed the years that are lost by being summarized on a few pages. Still I was glad to be back in Harlan's head for a while. It felt like talking with an old friend.

Rating:
Summary: A Nice Follow Up
Review: "Harlan's Race" doesn't feel as much a sequel, as a continuation. The book picks up right where the "Front Runner" left off, with Billy Sive being murdered at the Olympic Games, and it's aftermath.I was glad I had re-read "...Runner" before I started this because it helped keep the characters fresh in my mind. Nell Warren succeeds in keeping Harlan's voice a barometer of the changing times as the seventies gives way to the somewhat more tolerant 80s.The backbone of the book is really a mystery novel with an apparent accomplice in Billy's murder still loose and aiming at Harlan. I thought for the most part this was successful although the identity of the mystery person began to be telegraphed towards the end which took some suspense out of it.My only other slight disappointment with the book was the leaping of years towards the end to bring the story closer to the present. Knowing this book may be part of a total of four books, I almost wish she'd taken more time and detailed the years that are lost by being summarized on a few pages. Still I was glad to be back in Harlan's head for a while. It felt like talking with an old friend.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Continuation to a Fabulous Story!
Review: Although Harlan's race was written 20 years after its landmark predicessor 'The Front Runner'(TFR). This book covers the period of time from Billy's death at the end of TFR, which occurs in 1976 and takes us through Harlan Brown's trials and tribulations up to the early 1990's.

This book picked up the story EXACTLY where I thought it should have.. which was where the previous book left off. Harlan is still dealing with the sudden death of Billy Sive, and the changes that death causes in everyone around him.

Harlan has to deal with 'LEV.', a unseen stalker/harrasser that keeps threatening Harlan and his friends via weird messages. Harlan becomes afraid to do nearly anything that might cause LEV. to do more damage or death around him. We see Harlan drop and come back during this book several times.

This book also deals with the murder of Harvey Milk in San Francisco, as well as the introduction to the AIDS era, before it was known what it was all the way into the early 1990's when the government barely recognized it existed.

The Author, Patricia Nell Warren continued her brilliance into the Gay Man's mind by creating a wonderful sequel to TFR. I highly recommend reading this book, but would recommend that you read TFR first.. it gives great background on the story and chararacters. I am starting sequel #3 'Billy's Boy'. I expect it will be just as good as the others... I will let you know shortly!

Happy READING!!!

Rating:
Summary: A Great Continuation to a Fabulous Story!
Review: Although Harlan's race was written 20 years after its landmark predicessor 'The Front Runner'(TFR). This book covers the period of time from Billy's death at the end of TFR, which occurs in 1976 and takes us through Harlan Brown's trials and tribulations up to the early 1990's.

This book picked up the story EXACTLY where I thought it should have.. which was where the previous book left off. Harlan is still dealing with the sudden death of Billy Sive, and the changes that death causes in everyone around him.

Harlan has to deal with 'LEV.', a unseen stalker/harrasser that keeps threatening Harlan and his friends via weird messages. Harlan becomes afraid to do nearly anything that might cause LEV. to do more damage or death around him. We see Harlan drop and come back during this book several times.

This book also deals with the murder of Harvey Milk in San Francisco, as well as the introduction to the AIDS era, before it was known what it was all the way into the early 1990's when the government barely recognized it existed.

The Author, Patricia Nell Warren continued her brilliance into the Gay Man's mind by creating a wonderful sequel to TFR. I highly recommend reading this book, but would recommend that you read TFR first.. it gives great background on the story and chararacters. I am starting sequel #3 'Billy's Boy'. I expect it will be just as good as the others... I will let you know shortly!

Happy READING!!!

Rating:
Summary: A Satisfying Sequel
Review: As history shows, most sequels are often a rehash of the previous work, films - books - etc. But Ms. Warren had established so much history in the original book, The Front Runner, that this sequel works on many levels. I was only a little disappointed by a secondary plot involving a man from Harlan's past as boy who has a hideous back story to him. In some ways, it hurt my memory of the original novel a bit, and gave this book a "Hollywood" type story line that I didn't really appreciate. The story is wonderful, and its nice to revist these characters again. This is truly a book for the people who loved the original so much that you need to know what happens next.

Rating:
Summary: "Harlans Race" Wins
Review: Do you ever feel so silly sometimes when you miss something important? That's how I felt about this sequel to one of my all time favorite books, "The Front Runner".

Fortunately I read some of the reviews of Patrica Warrens first in this series and realized "Harlans Race" existed. I found myself excited to have the chance to rekindle my affection for these characters.

In this look at Harlans life after Billy's demise, we see an even edgier, harder, Harlan. And rightfully so. These 20 years later...times are tougher.

From lusting after Vince, to militant gay politics to Harlans secretive seductive past, we are privy to an emotional ride.

I admire the way Ms. Warren captures our very essence of humanistic nature. One does not have to be gay to appreciate this...just open minded.

Thanks--CDS

Rating:
Summary: Finally - the sequel !!!!
Review: How do you write a sequel to a gay American classic? Ask Patricia Nell Warren. She's done it! I can't say that I was always happy with the choices she made but I have to agree that they were the right ones.

No, this isn't the Front Runner. But then no book could be. The 70's offered the gay male a new sensibility about his sexuality. It allowed him to realize that he was not some horrible outcast in modern society. The Front Runner was a romance that gay men had been waiting for since the beginning of time. Where E. M. Forster's Maurice was a romance, it unrealistically allowed the characters to have an unqualified happy ending. Warren did not. Warren gave her characters flesh, blood, and oxygen that had been so lacking in so many previous gay themed novels. I cried my eyes out when I first read The Front Runner. Because I had waited almost twenty years for the sequel, I tore through it with a vengeance. We can't hope for the love and joy that we experienced reading The Front Runner. That wonderful book's ending couldn't allow Harlan's Race to be nearly as idealistic or uplifting. However, it does provide us with a carefully crafted, believable memorial to gay fiction's (possibly most loved) character: Billy Sive. In twenty years I've moved from Billy's age to Harlan's and I found that his skin fit me well. Read this book, if you've read the first one. If not, start there and work your way forward. This is great storytelling. Warren's books should be required reading for Pat Robertson and his contemporaries. Maybe then, they would understand "forbidden love".

I have to give the book four stars instead of five simply because it's missing my favorite character.

Rating:
Summary: Harlan's Race
Review: I read THE FRONT RUNNER several years ago, and I re-read it before reading HARLAN'S RACE. FRONT RUNNER was a jewel of linear storytelling. HARLAN'S RACE tried to cover too many angles: Harlan and Vince; Harlan and Chino; Harlan and Marian and Betsy and Falcom; the search for LEV.; AIDS; political issues; and on and on. And there was Harlan's continuous guilty whine for Billy while lusting for Chino and Vince.

Seem Warren tried to wrap up all the loose ends of FRONT RUNNER. But, story would have been stronger and more interested if Warren had selected a focus. But sequals seem never to live up to the first big book.

Rating:
Summary: Joltingly Jump-Cut? Well Anyhow, Powerfully Portrayed...
Review: I thought I knew "all about" the various ways fiction can be written, but this book showed me a way new to me--whether it's the best way or not?... The book's pattern first eluded me, then confused/annoyed me, then "worked" well enough for me. The pattern is to build via plot-twists: suddenly-emerging changes or new appearances. Like the reader is always made to turn some abrupt corner into a development NOT carefully-foreshadowed. Not unbelievable, just emerging with a jolt. Is this method a cheap shot and thus confusing? or truthful to life-events after all?

For instance, suddenly "bang" Prescott College up and closes its doors, due to money problems. Nobody saw it coming. Then suddenly "bang" Vince who had been training to be a militant gay terrorist, up and drops his violence to work within the system. Who knew or even suspected? Then suddenly "bang" Harlan's son re-enters his life, then "bang" is condemned for this by his homophobic family, then "bang" it's okay after all.

After a dozen or so out-of-the-blue twists-and-turns like these, I for one started to feel yanked around on some chain or other. What ever happend to good fiction's organic gradual evolution of elements with foreshadowings?

And yet author Warren DOES work these slam-bang eruptions thematically. Idea-wise, she makes each new event carefully carry truths, both gay-specific and also human-general. And emotion-wise, Warren does make the sudden shift contain its emotion which she did not fabricate up, but truly felt, via punch plus empathy.

So after all, the novel did end up working for me the picky (?) fiction-buff--at least mostly. It will probably work even better for "you," those readers who are more open to varied fictional forms. Enjoy Patricia Nell Warren's stamp of style--if not the first tier of fiction, still suave and sensitive after her fashion which her fans love.

Rating:
Summary: Stronger Kick than the original
Review: Reading Harlan's Race for the first time is like a refreshing slap to the face. I love The Frontrunner and Billy but in a way, throughout the years and the way it has been heralded as THE gay classic of all time, has made it seem less realistic and almost fable-like and surreal (despite the shocking conclusion).

This book relates the events that happened after Billy's murder and maybe, I can relate to it more, because it deals with death and rebirth, agony and triumph, hatred and love in a way that is more tangible, even grittier and harsher than but nonetheless as beautiful as the Frontrunner.