Steven Rowley
Author of The Guncle
About the Author
Image credit: via Babelio
Series
Works by Steven Rowley
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Gender
- male
- Education
- Emerson College
- Relationships
- Lane, Byron (husband)
- Nationality
- USA
- Places of residence
- Portland, Maine, USA
Palm Springs, California, USA - Associated Place (for map)
- USA
Members
Reviews
I loved this book. I loved the humor, pathos, the search for identity and belonging. James Smale is writing an autobiographical novel wherein his mother Aileen Smale is the central figure. How could she not be? She chose James over her husband. She was always the constant in James life. Much of the book is devoted to James’ need to decode who she is until there are no more secrets and the potential damage it will do to their relationship.
Depicted with wit and hilarious inner dialogue James show more has his less than memorable moments and humbly acknowledges his failures. Set in New York in the 1990s the description of the publishing world is James ability to differentiate between a “beige girl” and a “Power beige”. Upon their first meeting, he bows to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, his Editor, because he doesn’t know the protocol. He has a coping mechanism of performing ten jumping jacks and that can happen in the most inappropriate places. He apologizes frequently. I like him a lot.
Watching a TV clip of the Clintons walking from the Capitol to the White House James Smale reflects that “An administration is judged by whether or not it fulfills the promise of its start. A book should be judged in a similar way”. Mr. Rowley you have hit a home run.
Thank you Netgalley and Putnam for a copy. show less
Depicted with wit and hilarious inner dialogue James show more has his less than memorable moments and humbly acknowledges his failures. Set in New York in the 1990s the description of the publishing world is James ability to differentiate between a “beige girl” and a “Power beige”. Upon their first meeting, he bows to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, his Editor, because he doesn’t know the protocol. He has a coping mechanism of performing ten jumping jacks and that can happen in the most inappropriate places. He apologizes frequently. I like him a lot.
Watching a TV clip of the Clintons walking from the Capitol to the White House James Smale reflects that “An administration is judged by whether or not it fulfills the promise of its start. A book should be judged in a similar way”. Mr. Rowley you have hit a home run.
Thank you Netgalley and Putnam for a copy. show less
Rating: 4* of five
The Publisher Says: Patrick, or Gay Uncle Patrick (GUP, for short), has always loved his niece, Maisie, and nephew, Grant. That is, he loves spending time with them when they come out to Palm Springs for weeklong visits, or when he heads home to Connecticut for the holidays. But in terms of caretaking and relating to two children, no matter how adorable, Patrick is honestly a bit out of his league.
So when tragedy strikes and Maisie and Grant lose their mother and show more Patrick’s brother has a health crisis of his own, Patrick finds himself suddenly taking on the role of primary guardian. Despite having a set of “Guncle Rules” ready to go, Patrick has no idea what to expect, having spent years barely holding on after the loss of his great love, a somewhat-stalled career, and a lifestyle not-so-suited to a six- and a nine-year-old. Quickly realizing that parenting—even if temporary—isn’t solved with treats and jokes, Patrick’s eyes are opened to a new sense of responsibility, and the realization that, sometimes, even being larger than life means you’re unfailingly human.
I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT OF MY LOCAL LIBRARY AFTER MONTHS ON THE WAITING LIST. USE THOSE LIBRARIES! WE'RE HOW THEY LIVE.
My Review: Last year's big beach read was damned near perfect for the job of being gay enough to really show people how this shit works in real life without making straight people squirm. No fewer than 26 (twenty-six!) mass-media straight venues listed it as a must-read! TWENTY-SIX! Ten years ago, I'd've fallen over in a heap; now I'm mightily impressed. And that, mes vieux, is what we call "progress" of the best sort.
But really, can you fault their discernment?
Really, the most delicious Negroni (Aperol! faugh!) of fun and profundity for the masses! I can absolutely recommend this book to straight women, gay guys over thirty, and the very most adventurous straight men and lesbians.
...wait...that's it? That's the review?
Honestly, it could be. That's what the reviewer does, right? Tell you and those like you if a book is worth reading, and identify that group to the best of their ability. Illustrate with relevant (in the reviewer's opinion) examples, do one's best not to spoiler things for the sensitive fleurs who, inexplicably, still read reviews but don't want to know anything that happens in the artwork in question. But the twenty-six (!) media outlets that yawped about this book in 2021 already did that. (They did not tell you, however, about being assaulted in the sensibilities by twelve {12} w-bombs. It was an invasion of the eye-disease-having winkers. Ick.)
So, let me tell you a little something that is a spoiler, but is also something you really need to know: This is also a book about loving more than you fear being hurt. This is a book about processing loss, making its deforming agonies fit into a shape that will carry you through the rest of a life; this is a book about the unique, unusual pain of losing your mate as a gay man.
Regular readers know that I've had my share of losses, incalculably awful ones, and met them without a lot of inner strength due to my own beginnings among women who judged, and felt comfortable expressing their contempt for, me. I'm not going to rehash the stories, they're spread all over this place, but the fact is I understand Patrick well. He found his Joe...who chose him to be his family...and he had his RG bestie Sara, who also chose him to be her family to the point she married his little brother. His family, then, was born, found, made. He felt it was his...and gawd laughed her evil laugh.
Joe, gone in an instant, his life taken before his body stopped working; Sara, withered and wizened by illness, slowly slowly vanishing, and Patrick losing again...this time with higher stakes, loss built on loss. And Sara? Well. That's the loveliest thing about this book. Sara, whom we meet briefly in flashbacks of her loving bestieship with Patrick, is honestly like Nut the sky goddess and the goddess of Mothers as she was The Mother. Her role is pervasive, her life is not over...never truly will be...but she is, for all that, a space not an object. And that is so exactly like motherhood that it's really a little terrifying....
The word "Guncle" is a portmanteau of "gay" and "uncle" which I trust won't surprise readers of my words. It's a way of refining a relationship that is largely, in the twenty-first century, fungible. I called men "Uncle" who were neither married to my aunts nor related to my parents. It's a standard feature of life now, we claim relationships and make of them things that we're interested in having or being. The family Patrick has built is so deeply rooted that Guncle Patrick is GUP, the Guncle, anything you want because he's still building his identity. As we all should throughout our lives, after Joe's and Sara's deaths, Patrick is reinventing himself in this summer-long story of a clueless gay man taking on the role of grief counselor and rock of support to two kids and, finally, himself.
"Coming of age" is a phrase that, when applied to novels, shows, films, and other cultural detritus, causes my stomach to churn with acid produced by the "flight" part of the famous response. I hated being a teenager and I don't much want to experience that horrible time again in art. Any art. But the simple fact is, we come of middle-age, we come of old-age...we aren't ever Finished Products. That's for characters created to show us their intended side, their best profile. This book's biggest and best gift to the reader of middle or older years is that: Patrick comes of age, again, as he processes his intense and life-altering grief with humor and wit, with stakes far beyond his own self, with clumsy but real love and, finally, respect for the role of loss and sadness, for grief's immense and unending weight.
Lift weights for strength. Do yoga for flexibility. Nourish your body with the tenderest care and attention to its needs. Because it is the vessel that will support your huge burden of grief and sadness, your light and love, your voice as you speak your truth.
Gym bunny GUP did. And Author Steven Rowley led us there without making it a trudge, or selling it short; I didn't just think up that stuff and say it here, I found it all in this light, easy-to-read novel about a man asked to do the impossible. Again: Heal. show less
The Publisher Says: Patrick, or Gay Uncle Patrick (GUP, for short), has always loved his niece, Maisie, and nephew, Grant. That is, he loves spending time with them when they come out to Palm Springs for weeklong visits, or when he heads home to Connecticut for the holidays. But in terms of caretaking and relating to two children, no matter how adorable, Patrick is honestly a bit out of his league.
So when tragedy strikes and Maisie and Grant lose their mother and show more Patrick’s brother has a health crisis of his own, Patrick finds himself suddenly taking on the role of primary guardian. Despite having a set of “Guncle Rules” ready to go, Patrick has no idea what to expect, having spent years barely holding on after the loss of his great love, a somewhat-stalled career, and a lifestyle not-so-suited to a six- and a nine-year-old. Quickly realizing that parenting—even if temporary—isn’t solved with treats and jokes, Patrick’s eyes are opened to a new sense of responsibility, and the realization that, sometimes, even being larger than life means you’re unfailingly human.
I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT OF MY LOCAL LIBRARY AFTER MONTHS ON THE WAITING LIST. USE THOSE LIBRARIES! WE'RE HOW THEY LIVE.
My Review: Last year's big beach read was damned near perfect for the job of being gay enough to really show people how this shit works in real life without making straight people squirm. No fewer than 26 (twenty-six!) mass-media straight venues listed it as a must-read! TWENTY-SIX! Ten years ago, I'd've fallen over in a heap; now I'm mightily impressed. And that, mes vieux, is what we call "progress" of the best sort.
But really, can you fault their discernment?
“You’re forty-three!” Maisie bellowed.
“Who are you, the DMV? Lower your voice.”
“That’s almost fifty!” Grant’s eyes grew big.
Patrick took the jab, then closed his eyes and bit his lower lip; the observation was just shy of a hate crime.
–and–
“Canada is harmless and the prime minister is a total snack, so we can do Paw Patrol. But another time, because we have to move beyond brunch and start planning our day. What are you guys thinking, do you have anything on your calendars?”
–and–
Books should be an experience, he thought, not a trophy for having read them.
Really, the most delicious Negroni (Aperol! faugh!) of fun and profundity for the masses! I can absolutely recommend this book to straight women, gay guys over thirty, and the very most adventurous straight men and lesbians.
...wait...that's it? That's the review?
Honestly, it could be. That's what the reviewer does, right? Tell you and those like you if a book is worth reading, and identify that group to the best of their ability. Illustrate with relevant (in the reviewer's opinion) examples, do one's best not to spoiler things for the sensitive fleurs who, inexplicably, still read reviews but don't want to know anything that happens in the artwork in question. But the twenty-six (!) media outlets that yawped about this book in 2021 already did that. (They did not tell you, however, about being assaulted in the sensibilities by twelve {12} w-bombs. It was an invasion of the eye-disease-having winkers. Ick.)
So, let me tell you a little something that is a spoiler, but is also something you really need to know: This is also a book about loving more than you fear being hurt. This is a book about processing loss, making its deforming agonies fit into a shape that will carry you through the rest of a life; this is a book about the unique, unusual pain of losing your mate as a gay man.
Regular readers know that I've had my share of losses, incalculably awful ones, and met them without a lot of inner strength due to my own beginnings among women who judged, and felt comfortable expressing their contempt for, me. I'm not going to rehash the stories, they're spread all over this place, but the fact is I understand Patrick well. He found his Joe...who chose him to be his family...and he had his RG bestie Sara, who also chose him to be her family to the point she married his little brother. His family, then, was born, found, made. He felt it was his...and gawd laughed her evil laugh.
Joe, gone in an instant, his life taken before his body stopped working; Sara, withered and wizened by illness, slowly slowly vanishing, and Patrick losing again...this time with higher stakes, loss built on loss. And Sara? Well. That's the loveliest thing about this book. Sara, whom we meet briefly in flashbacks of her loving bestieship with Patrick, is honestly like Nut the sky goddess and the goddess of Mothers as she was The Mother. Her role is pervasive, her life is not over...never truly will be...but she is, for all that, a space not an object. And that is so exactly like motherhood that it's really a little terrifying....
The word "Guncle" is a portmanteau of "gay" and "uncle" which I trust won't surprise readers of my words. It's a way of refining a relationship that is largely, in the twenty-first century, fungible. I called men "Uncle" who were neither married to my aunts nor related to my parents. It's a standard feature of life now, we claim relationships and make of them things that we're interested in having or being. The family Patrick has built is so deeply rooted that Guncle Patrick is GUP, the Guncle, anything you want because he's still building his identity. As we all should throughout our lives, after Joe's and Sara's deaths, Patrick is reinventing himself in this summer-long story of a clueless gay man taking on the role of grief counselor and rock of support to two kids and, finally, himself.
"Coming of age" is a phrase that, when applied to novels, shows, films, and other cultural detritus, causes my stomach to churn with acid produced by the "flight" part of the famous response. I hated being a teenager and I don't much want to experience that horrible time again in art. Any art. But the simple fact is, we come of middle-age, we come of old-age...we aren't ever Finished Products. That's for characters created to show us their intended side, their best profile. This book's biggest and best gift to the reader of middle or older years is that: Patrick comes of age, again, as he processes his intense and life-altering grief with humor and wit, with stakes far beyond his own self, with clumsy but real love and, finally, respect for the role of loss and sadness, for grief's immense and unending weight.
Lift weights for strength. Do yoga for flexibility. Nourish your body with the tenderest care and attention to its needs. Because it is the vessel that will support your huge burden of grief and sadness, your light and love, your voice as you speak your truth.
Gym bunny GUP did. And Author Steven Rowley led us there without making it a trudge, or selling it short; I didn't just think up that stuff and say it here, I found it all in this light, easy-to-read novel about a man asked to do the impossible. Again: Heal. show less
Rating: 4* of five
The Publisher Says: A poignant, hilarious, and wholly original love story, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Celebrants and winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor.
College professor Jesse del Ruth has been abandoned. Thirty years into their relationship, Jesse witnesses his husband Norman get out of bed late one night, walk into their Joshua Tree backyard, step into a strange beam of light and . . . disappear. How could Norman desert him after a show more lifetime together? Where did he go? And, most confoundingly . . . will he ever return? Jesse knew they were longing for something, both feeling stuck. But had Norman been so stuck that his only option was to leave Jesse behind?
As Jesse struggles to understand Norman’s disappearance, he tries to piece together his new reality. Is he expected to wait patiently for a partner who may never come back? Or is this an opportunity for reinvention? He is, after all, alone for the first time in his adult life. Should he return to the classroom? Put in a pool? Get a dog? Call his estranged mother? What does it mean to be alone when you’ve always been one half of a whole?
When Norman’s sister Lally lands on Jesse’s doorstep with an urgent request, Norman’s absence becomes even more profound. Add to Jesse’s grief and confusion a conspiracy-theorist neighbor, a strange man following him, and suspicions that he may have had a hand in Norman’s disappearance, and Jesse starts to crack under the pressure. With his husband missing and the world closing in, all eyes are on Jesse. Before he can understand how Norman could leave it all behind, Jesse must confront what it means to stay.
In Take Me With You, Steven Rowley brings his resonant wit and emotional insight to an epic love story—an exploration of the forces that draw two people into the same orbit and the gravity that threatens to pull them apart.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: Being left as a subject for comedy makes more sense to me now that I've left and been left often enough to really *get* why people leave. Jesse and Norman, after a lifetime together, are...ordinary. They don't have the most exciting life but they're...contented. A perfect meet-cute sets them off on a long voyage of comfortable ordinariness. The voyage ends when Norman debarks their cruise ship in a spectacular way.
What follows is Jesse's journey through grief. Where'd he go...why'd he go...is he coming back....
Reckoning up a lifetime's happy domesticity in the ruins of abandonment shouldn't be funny. Often enough it's not. Often enough it is...this is Steven Rowley, after all...but it's muted, it's in the brightly lit pastels of these men's Joshua Tree homeplace. I got to the ending and thought, "if anyone says 'don't panic' I will riot" but no, no indeed, just a very endearing flashback and some rollerblades.
It's not the same as Author Rowley has given us in the past, it's maybe not his tippy-top form, at least for my taste; but I am happier, I am more at one with my contentment than I was before I read it.
I call that an excellent return on time invested. show less
The Publisher Says: A poignant, hilarious, and wholly original love story, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Celebrants and winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor.
College professor Jesse del Ruth has been abandoned. Thirty years into their relationship, Jesse witnesses his husband Norman get out of bed late one night, walk into their Joshua Tree backyard, step into a strange beam of light and . . . disappear. How could Norman desert him after a show more lifetime together? Where did he go? And, most confoundingly . . . will he ever return? Jesse knew they were longing for something, both feeling stuck. But had Norman been so stuck that his only option was to leave Jesse behind?
As Jesse struggles to understand Norman’s disappearance, he tries to piece together his new reality. Is he expected to wait patiently for a partner who may never come back? Or is this an opportunity for reinvention? He is, after all, alone for the first time in his adult life. Should he return to the classroom? Put in a pool? Get a dog? Call his estranged mother? What does it mean to be alone when you’ve always been one half of a whole?
When Norman’s sister Lally lands on Jesse’s doorstep with an urgent request, Norman’s absence becomes even more profound. Add to Jesse’s grief and confusion a conspiracy-theorist neighbor, a strange man following him, and suspicions that he may have had a hand in Norman’s disappearance, and Jesse starts to crack under the pressure. With his husband missing and the world closing in, all eyes are on Jesse. Before he can understand how Norman could leave it all behind, Jesse must confront what it means to stay.
In Take Me With You, Steven Rowley brings his resonant wit and emotional insight to an epic love story—an exploration of the forces that draw two people into the same orbit and the gravity that threatens to pull them apart.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: Being left as a subject for comedy makes more sense to me now that I've left and been left often enough to really *get* why people leave. Jesse and Norman, after a lifetime together, are...ordinary. They don't have the most exciting life but they're...contented. A perfect meet-cute sets them off on a long voyage of comfortable ordinariness. The voyage ends when Norman debarks their cruise ship in a spectacular way.
What follows is Jesse's journey through grief. Where'd he go...why'd he go...is he coming back....
Reckoning up a lifetime's happy domesticity in the ruins of abandonment shouldn't be funny. Often enough it's not. Often enough it is...this is Steven Rowley, after all...but it's muted, it's in the brightly lit pastels of these men's Joshua Tree homeplace. I got to the ending and thought, "if anyone says 'don't panic' I will riot" but no, no indeed, just a very endearing flashback and some rollerblades.
It's not the same as Author Rowley has given us in the past, it's maybe not his tippy-top form, at least for my taste; but I am happier, I am more at one with my contentment than I was before I read it.
I call that an excellent return on time invested. show less
I LOVE THIS BOOK! It's quick, witty, fun, brought me to tears, and is easy to read. The Guncle is the type of book I found myself reading slower as the pages lessened; I didn't want it to end.
Steven Rowley weaves a clever tale about GUP, Gay Uncle Patrick, once on TV, still reasonably recognizable, who has escaped the lights and glam of LA to leave a somewhat reclusive life in Palm Springs. After the death of his best friend/sister-in-law, his brother requests Patrick to care for his 6 and show more 9-year-old while he attends rehab.
Begrudgingly, due to fear of raising the children for 9-months, Patrick agrees and the hilarity begins.
The Guncle is rife with easy banter between the 40-something Guncle and the highly inquisitive, mourning children, and while doing his best to assist the kiddos with their grief, Patrick learns his own lessons about navigating grief.
The messages are clear throughout the book: Be who you are, let others be who they are, and do it all without judgment. Perhaps for me, The Guncle struck a chord because I hope for my son to have an opportunity to shine with his future nieces and nephews the way Patrick does for Maise and Grant.
Read this. You're welcome. show less
Steven Rowley weaves a clever tale about GUP, Gay Uncle Patrick, once on TV, still reasonably recognizable, who has escaped the lights and glam of LA to leave a somewhat reclusive life in Palm Springs. After the death of his best friend/sister-in-law, his brother requests Patrick to care for his 6 and show more 9-year-old while he attends rehab.
Begrudgingly, due to fear of raising the children for 9-months, Patrick agrees and the hilarity begins.
The Guncle is rife with easy banter between the 40-something Guncle and the highly inquisitive, mourning children, and while doing his best to assist the kiddos with their grief, Patrick learns his own lessons about navigating grief.
The messages are clear throughout the book: Be who you are, let others be who they are, and do it all without judgment. Perhaps for me, The Guncle struck a chord because I hope for my son to have an opportunity to shine with his future nieces and nephews the way Patrick does for Maise and Grant.
Read this. You're welcome. show less
Lists
Matt (1)
READ IN 2022 (1)
READ IN 2021 (1)
FAB 2021 (1)
Comfort Reads (1)
READ in 2023 (1)
AudiblePlus 2023 (1)
READ in 2024 (1)
Read with Jenna (1)
Awards
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 13
- Members
- 4,422
- Popularity
- #5,664
- Rating
- 3.9
- Reviews
- 282
- ISBNs
- 82
- Languages
- 10
- Favorited
- 1