Rating: 
Summary: Not-So Scary Monsters
Review: No, this is not about monsters, but Alvarez is able to insert the theme or mention of monsters of a sort into each of these lightly interlocking stories. Mark, the brilliant yet scattered musician, is one of the lead characters in several stories. Others include Mark's partner Dean, and the monster he faces in a calculating real estate fraud in Puerto Rico. While many of the consistent themes of gay fiction are included, Alvarez is able to delicately cover familiar territory with a deft style.Written in a clean, eloquent and thought-provoking style, Alvarez obviously knows good writing...
Rating: 
Summary: Much much more than meets the eye
Review: Now and then books pop up that cause a stir in the naive reader - a stir that proves once again that good literature is as alive as an evolving medium as any of the arts. Visual arts are perhaps easier to categorize into schools or trends and such labelling often promotes more transient interest in works of questionable value than providing the mind expanding function of the new, the changed, the unique. Literature is not so easily codified. While the evidence of our current increased reading habits becomes more evident, the usual best-seller hype too often submerges unique new voices. Such is the case with Aldo Alvarez. Though acknowledged in circles of informed writers and critics and readers of literary magazines, Alvarez seems to explode on the scene with INTERESTING MONSTERS like a breath of fresh literary air. Alvarez himself takes care to inform us of his position in the ReModernism school (and I'll let you read his precis about that without diluting the wit and bite!). This is not a book of short stories: this is a theme and variations on the myth and reality and ultimate viability of interpersonal relationships. Yes, the relationship explored is between two gay men, and in electing to fast forward, flash back, daudle, and pause for amusing roulades, Alvarez creates an atmosphere for self examination that is universal. The "interesting monsters" of the title appear to be the schisms in each of our personalities that surface and retreat at times with disatrous/amusing results. This little book is packed with humor, with tenderness, with sheer professorial excursions into the English language. Some readers may find it not well tied or a bit obtuse, but those "faults" are easily healed with subsequent reaings - once you understand the enormously invigorating new style passing before your eyes and seeping into your brain. A fine book by a fine writer - and observor!
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