Getting Off Clean

Rating:
Summary: A great novel about escapism and discrimination
Review: A very well written book about the experiences of a highschool student living in a small town in the north of the US, where racial tensions are strong and where it is a rough environment to come out of the closet. Eric, the main character, lives in a very closed-minded family, with its own internal problems, and feels stuck. The only thing he really wants is to get out. The whole novel seems to be about this general idea: escapism. How to get out of this closed-minded town, with its hypocratic political attitudes - e.g. the assembly of people in the church after a rising of racial tendencies - and its strong conventional morals. The character Eric falls in love with, Brooks, an upper class black highschool student, is doing that all his life: escaping ... getting dropped out of school every time. And his family is not much different, with his father moving away from him and his mother to the warm south and his mother leaving him to go to Europe and get out of America. The whole affair between Eric and Brooks seems to be on the edge of loosing themselves in their romance and longing to escape. Eric, who is deeply 'grounded' in his family and environment can handle more easily then Brooks, who is alone on the world, and too smart not to take his ideas in its full consequences, and who almost loses it. I really loved reading this book and I was very touched. Probably because 'escapism' is a feeling I can too well understand. The book is much more about that - the breathless space of the own environment and the dreams of getting away - then it is purely about homosexuality or coming out. The end was a slight disappointment to me, since it ends too 'glorious', as seems to be typical at least for American movies. A must to read for anyone who wants to read about the other side of American moral values ...

Rating:
Summary: A Good Story, but as Troubling as its Characters
Review: A wonderful novel. Sexy, very dense, even dramatic whithout ever becoming sentimental. it is one of the best!

Rating:
Summary: Getting Off Clean
Review: I agree with a lot of the other reviews that this book is well-done, but has a strange and unnecessary ending. One of the reviewers on the back of the hardcover says that the author shows how "white people use black people" for catharsis, and I don't agree that's what Murphy intended. What he did was give an excellent example of "alterity" or otherness. To a greater or lesser degree, everyone is conscious of difference - race, creed, class, nationality, etc. and the misunderstandings and trouble this sometimes causes. After a murder of young white woman by someone believed to be hispanic or black, the misunderstanding caused by alterity flares up sharply. I believe that Murphy's characters serve him well in showing how individual lives are deeply affected by societal hysteria.

Eric Fitzpatrick doesn't strike me as the most three dimensional, lovable character but he is an excellent portrait of a high school student so wrapped up in his studies that he's hardly had time to discover his own sexuality. The cover of this book is very sexual, and the books few sex scenes are described by Eric in pretty mild tones -- which is perfect because it's much more realistic for the young narrator to be somewhat shy about detailing his experiences.

Brooks Tremont would be hard to believe if, amazingly, I didn't know someone exactly like him. It's not hard to imagine a disenfranchised, wealthy african-american teenager. But Murphy slightly downplays Brooks' borderline psychotic behavior. He is not at all a good person to Eric, and his condescension is the least of his sins.

The only reason the relationship is believable is that it takes place in 1987 before the internet was popular and before many high schools had gay friendly organizations. Eric latches on to Brooks because he's the only gay person he knows. Still with the abuse Eric takes, Murphy pushes realism a bit. However, Eric is a good role model, and this is an important book for gay youth of high school age to discover.

Rating:
Summary: Getting Off Clean
Review: I agree with a lot of the other reviews that this book is well-done, but has a strange and unnecessary ending. One of the reviewers on the back of the hardcover says that the author shows how "white people use black people" for catharsis, and I don't agree that's what Murphy intended. What he did was give an excellent example of "alterity" or otherness. To a greater or lesser degree, everyone is conscious of difference - race, creed, class, nationality, etc. and the misunderstandings and trouble this sometimes causes. After a murder of young white woman by someone believed to be hispanic or black, the misunderstanding caused by alterity flares up sharply. I believe that Murphy's characters serve him well in showing how individual lives are deeply affected by societal hysteria.

Eric Fitzpatrick doesn't strike me as the most three dimensional, lovable character but he is an excellent portrait of a high school student so wrapped up in his studies that he's hardly had time to discover his own sexuality. The cover of this book is very sexual, and the books few sex scenes are described by Eric in pretty mild tones -- which is perfect because it's much more realistic for the young narrator to be somewhat shy about detailing his experiences.

Brooks Tremont would be hard to believe if, amazingly, I didn't know someone exactly like him. It's not hard to imagine a disenfranchised, wealthy african-american teenager. But Murphy slightly downplays Brooks' borderline psychotic behavior. He is not at all a good person to Eric, and his condescension is the least of his sins.

The only reason the relationship is believable is that it takes place in 1987 before the internet was popular and before many high schools had gay friendly organizations. Eric latches on to Brooks because he's the only gay person he knows. Still with the abuse Eric takes, Murphy pushes realism a bit. However, Eric is a good role model, and this is an important book for gay youth of high school age to discover.

Rating:
Summary: Loved the interplay of race and sexual orientation
Review: Interesting to read about the trials of Eric Fitzpatrick as he muddles his way through his unwitting position as the poster boy for racial harmony while keeping his own lover, who is black and a man, a secret. (You have to wonder back in the height of the Reagan years which aspect of Brooks would have been more upsetting to the "average" folks.) As a rough contemporary of the fictional Eric and Brooks, I found both the racial tensions and the fears associated with coming out to be very true to the times in which they were written. I also liked the juxtaposition of the socio-economic levels -- it was the white boy who was poor and the black boy who was rich. Murphy didn't forget that, either, playing up the reaction of parents of the boys who beat up Brooks upon discovering that Brooks was a rich prep school boy and not your "ordinary" inner city kid.

Some people found the subplots involving Eric's family distracting, but I enjoyed them. For one thing, it helped center Eric and gave him more depth as a character. For another, it gave him a far better foil in Brenda than he ever had in Phoebe, who I found to be annoying.

I do have to agree with other reviewers who found the ending a little pat and contrived. Eric's about-face, if you will, seems too sudden, and I suspect that he will never completely abandon his quest for "conventional" success.

Rating:
Summary: If you liked GETTING OFF CLEAN, check out THE BREEDERS BOX
Review: Just a note: GETTING OFF CLEAN author Tim Murphy has another novel called THE BREEDERS BOX, thus far only published in the U.K., but you can get it at amazon.co.uk (or just hit the UK site link at the bottom of this page). The setting changes from a small Massachusetts town to glamorous downtown New York City at the end of the decadent 1980s, but the same great characters, fast pace and bighearted sarcasm are there...but the lovably foul-mouthed older sister in GETTING OFF CLEAN has been supplanted by an even more memorable one who's kind of like a cross between Holly Golightly and Parker Posey in PARTY GIRL...this is another Murphy page-turner with a mindblowing finale!

Rating:
Summary: Flawed, amiable
Review: Reminiscent of the coming-of-age novels authors like Judy Blume and Paul Zindel wrote for teenagers in the 1970s--except for the steamy gay sex. Murphy has a likeable protagonist in Eric, an Irish-Italian public high schooler so preoccupied with getting into Yale he almost fails to notice he likes boys. And there is a memorable character in Brooks, Eric's rich African-American lover, who attends a nearby prep school. The two bring into relief much that is troubling and complicated about race, class, and schooling in the United States, and their furtive couplings capture the awkwardness of adolescent romance, and of gay adolescent romance in particular. However, subplots about Eric's troubled family and friends, while piquant, diminish this main narrative, and Murphy tries to do too much with a cumbersome, melodramatic thread about rape, murder, and race riots.

Rating:
Summary: Flawed, amiable
Review: Reminiscent of the coming-of-age novels authors like Judy Blume and Paul Zindel wrote for teenagers in the 1970s--except for the steamy gay sex. Murphy has a likeable protagonist in Eric, an Irish-Italian public high schooler so preoccupied with getting into Yale he almost fails to notice he likes boys. And there is a memorable character in Brooks, Eric's rich African-American lover, who attends a nearby prep school. The two bring into relief much that is troubling and complicated about race, class, and schooling in the United States, and their furtive couplings capture the awkwardness of adolescent romance, and of gay adolescent romance in particular. However, subplots about Eric's troubled family and friends, while piquant, diminish this main narrative, and Murphy tries to do too much with a cumbersome, melodramatic thread about rape, murder, and race riots.

Rating:
Summary: POWERFUL SELF-DISCOVERY
Review: THIS IS A MUST READ!! Lyrical and seductive, this coming of age saga is epic in scope. Reconciling one's self to one's sexuality, coming out, self-doubt, pent-up emotions, inter-racial sex, domestic strife, and what appears to be insurmountable human problems collide with traditonalis and bigotry in this wonderfully written book. The resolutions? Shakespeare says it all, ..."Unto thine own self be true...". I was captivated by this story until the last sentence, and I was taken by surprise at the very end. Don't miss this one. It is a gem.

Rating:
Summary: great read, highly recommended
Review: WHAT A GREAT READ. FELL IN LOVE WITH THE CHARACTERS ERIC FITZPATRICK AND ESPECIALLY BROOKS TREMONT. ALL ARE RENDERED BEAUTIFULLY AND COME TOGETHER IN A COMPLEX BUT ENGROSSING STORY WHICH IS A PAGE TURNER. WAS A LITTLE PUT OFF BY THE ENDING BUT HIS BOOK SCREAMS FOR A SEQUEL. LIKE DID ERIC GO TO YALE AND DID HE EVER GO TO PARIS AND EVER MEET UP WITH BROOKS AGAIN. READ THIS AND ENJOY AS MUCH AS I DID. CAN'T RECOMMEND ENOUGH.