Rating: 
Summary: Too Much Too Late!
Review: There was a time when I enjoyed Picano's novels. I remember liking THE LURE a great deal and recommending it to all my friends. I certainly thought LIKE PEOPLE IN HISTORY was well worth the read. I do not know what went wrong with ONYX. I read that Mr. Picano lost a lover to AIDS. Any gay male in any major city in the United States in the last 20 years who is fortunate enough to be alive certainly understands the writer's loss. That, however, is no excuse for this book. Mr. Picano should have written another AIDS memoir or worked harder on this novel. The characters are basically black and white. I had difficulty believing they were real. For example, Ray, an Adonis, in the most graphic of scenes, has sex with the "straight" blue-collar worker Mike, who is also an Adonis, over and over, then rushes to give a blow by blow description of his adventures to his dying lover Jesse, who is without jealousy, can't wait to hear such stories and encourages Ray, who feels no guilt. Mike and Ray do not practice "safer" sex either. Certainly we have all known too many parents of AIDS patients who are awful people; but Jesse's mother, Adele Vaughan Moody, nee Carstairs-- if one can belive that name--is totally bad, a complete caricature. The basest characters must have some glimmer of goodness if they are to be believed at all. Finally the awful hospital scenes were so graphic as to be unreadable. I think Mr. Picano achieved a first in his minute description of how a body is burned in a crematory. Surely the Greeks, who were right about so many things, were absolutely correct when they had some things happen off stage. Many fine books about AIDS, both memoirs and novels, have been written in the past two decades. Monette's BORROWED TIME: AN AIDS MEMOIR, Mark Doty's HEAVEN'S COAST, the wonderful HOLDING THE MAN by the Australian writer Timothy Conigrave, Allen Gurganus' PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS, Edumnd White's THE MARRIED MAN, come to mind. Sadly this novel does not make the list. Reading this novel was not a total waste, however. I think I'll rent some of the Astaire/Rogers movies one of Picano's characters keeps watching to entertain himself. I kept wishing I were watching the graceful Astaire and Rogers instead of plowing through this novel.
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