First Comes Love

Rating:
Summary: Compelling, beautifully written, a sweet tribute...
Review: A Christmas gift, off a request list of mine (!), this book was a complete surprise to me. I groaned after reading the back cover with the summary on it... Winik, an occasional commentator on NPR's, "All Things Considered", married the love of her life in New Orleans a number of years ago - an improbable match: he gay, she straight, both heavy drug users. As I said, I groaned reading this but then started the book. In a touching, powerful voice, Winik describes the falling in love, the marriage, the birth of their two boys, and her husband's terrible death from AIDS. The book is inspirational and extremely well written. Winik's narrative and acute observations are a gift. Early in the book she sold me, "When you think how much of a person's beauty is in their eyes, it is astonishing how beautiful they can be with them closed in sleep, perhaps as when you suddenly notice how talented the members of a chorus line are once the stars of the show have left the stage." This is a sad and beautifully written book in tribute to a loved one. Well worth the read.?

Rating:
Summary: Compelling, beautifully written, a sweet tribute...
Review: A Christmas gift, off a request list of mine (!), this book was a complete surprise to me. I groaned after reading the back cover with the summary on it... Winik, an occasional commentator on NPR's, "All Things Considered", married the love of her life in New Orleans a number of years ago - an improbable match: he gay, she straight, both heavy drug users. As I said, I groaned reading this but then started the book. In a touching, powerful voice, Winik describes the falling in love, the marriage, the birth of their two boys, and her husband's terrible death from AIDS. The book is inspirational and extremely well written. Winik's narrative and acute observations are a gift. Early in the book she sold me, "When you think how much of a person's beauty is in their eyes, it is astonishing how beautiful they can be with them closed in sleep, perhaps as when you suddenly notice how talented the members of a chorus line are once the stars of the show have left the stage." This is a sad and beautifully written book in tribute to a loved one. Well worth the read. 

Rating:
Summary: well written and emotionally charged
Review: Account of a heterosexual woman's relationship and marriage to a gay man.This against the odds relationship is ravaged by drugs, alcohol, sexual problems, infidelity, and aids.The intensity of their bond in the beginning unravels as the reality of their relationship takes form. The author writes in a colorful and interesting style, always brutally honest to the end. There is no lack of emotion when reading this book. She makes you feel their plight, and wonder how in the world even one of them emerged intact

Rating:
Summary: What's Love Got To Do With It?
Review: Amazing, isn't it, how one person's non-fiction tale is another person's bizarre cautionary fable. In "First Comes Love", Marion Winik tells us all she can of her volatile relationship with the beautiful gay man she chose as her husband. It's the parts she can't tell us that may haunt her readers. (Although there is many an opportunity to read between the lines and to figure out that Marion Winik is one helluva scary human being.) A strong woman who offers shelter and unconditional love to the pretty object of her affections, Winik eventually tires of the conjugal set-up she has created (she will adore him, he will let her), and pulls away from her husband (Tony) just as his HIV positive state blooms into your basic, enervating case of AIDS. He's a little depressed about it all--gosh, I wonder why, Marion. Reading this book, one wishes more than anything that it was fiction, that the character of Marion Winik, it's-all-about-me control freak, was a figment of some deviously gifted writer's imagination.That way, maybe we would have heard some of the story in Tony's gentler, more loving vioce. What did he think of the loud, funny woman who loved him so much (but not long enough)? What did he imagine he would have done without her? And what did he see when he looked at their two sons? "First Comes Love" was dedicated to Tony, and he's on nearly every page--we deserve to know more about him than that he loved gardening and Judy Garland. Even Tony's mother (you'll love her!)is more clearly drawn that he is. Makes you wonder--are men quite real to Ms. Winik?

Rating:
Summary: Painful truths emerge from this tale of unconventional love
Review: An impulse check-out at the library resulted in one of my quickest and most unnerving reads in years. This extremely well-written memoir of love and marriage between a heroin-using writer and essayist from an upper-middle class Jewish background and a gay addict from an abusive Italian home, is startling for the universal truths it reveals about love, loss and commitment. At every turn, you find yourself asking questions about the actions and emotions of these wild and wildly disparate characters; eventually you realize those questions are not, in essence, much different from the questions you ask about yourself and those you love

Rating:
Summary: I wouldn't say it was perfect....
Review: but it definitely got my noodle going. And Rebecca LOVED it. and when she loves something, she REALLY loves it. Physically. Emotionally. Biblically. Like the other day she was at ChuckY Cheeses scoping out the hot guys, and some hot young stud was reading First Comes Love, and she got all over him like white on michael. It was scandalous, to say the least. EMBARRASSING! Slap me, I'm in heaven. I'm an asain protestute. Well, i gotta go, talk to you when I come to visit in thanksgiving. Love, Mom.

Rating:
Summary: I wouldn't say it was perfect....
Review: but it definitely got my noodle going. And Rebecca LOVED it. and when she loves something, she REALLY loves it. Physically. Emotionally. Biblically. Like the other day she was at ChuckY Cheeses scoping out the hot guys, and some hot young stud was reading First Comes Love, and she got all over him like white on michael. It was scandalous, to say the least. EMBARRASSING! Slap me, I'm in heaven. I'm an asain protestute. Well, i gotta go, talk to you when I come to visit in thanksgiving. Love, Mom.

Rating:
Summary: Sad
Review: First Comes Love epitomizes the 90's era of self-indulgent memoirs over? (and please, let it be over) This is basically a book about someone who makes one bad, selfish decision after another, wreaking havoc on the lives of those around her and then, rather than hanging her head in shame, deciding that it makes her so interesting that she ought to write about it and share it with the world. In fact, it sometimes seems as if the whole point of many of her actions is to have something outrageous to write about. One can't help but feel sorry for her sons, though. Did she ever stop for a moment and think of the effect on them of reading about her incredibly dysfunctional life?
This book is very, very sad.

Rating:
Summary: an understanding of a life I couldn't expect to understand
Review: Good biography offers lessons for life - and although my marraige is completely different from the authors I found her story of her husband's deaht from AIDS and her ways of dealing impressive and instructive. Winik suggests that "what is now called denial used to be known as hope" and argues articulately in its favor.

Rating:
Summary: There's just something about Winik . . .
Review: I give this book a "10" because it is rendered in beautiful, compelling prose and it took me to places in the human experience I have not gone and never will personally. I am aware that this memoir has been greeted with cautionary morality and has earned the dubious distinction of a citation in the Flummery Digest on the Internet, but for me, Winik makes sense. She writes straightforwardly without a lot of analysis, without apology, without self-punishing hindsight. I learned about Winik from, of all things, an article in the March 1997 issue of Cooking Light. As a follow-up activity to reading the book, I recommend searching the Internet for Winik's account of going on "Oprah" to promote the book.