James P Reynolds

The Empty Family Colm Toibin Penguin, London, 2011 The Empty Family, Toibin’s latest collection of short stories, recently won the Lambda Literary Award for best gay fiction. It was an Amazon Book of the Month and was shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short story Award. It garnered starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, [...]

The Far Euphraties Aryeh Lev Stollman Riverhead Books, New York, 1997 This wonderfully original debut novel is about the gay son of holocaust survivors living in Canada. It is a very subtle story, and perhaps this is one of the reasons it got such mixed reviews — love/hate. Many of the negative reviews talk about [...]

Suspension Robert Westfield Harper Perennial, U.S.A. 2006 This excellent gay first novel is set in New York City around the 9/11 attacks, and won the 2006 Lambda Literary Prize for both debut fiction and general fiction. I bought two of these brand new, signed, true first editions at an independent book store while visiting New [...]

The Master Colm Toibin Picador, U.K. 2004 Colm Toibin, one of Ireland’s greatest writers, one of the greatest gay writers anywhere, won many awards for this brilliant novel about five prolific years in the life of writer Henry James, including the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Lambda Literary Award, The Los Angeles Times Book [...]

The Practical Heart Allan Gurganus Alfred A. Knopf, U.S.A. 2001 Allan Gurganus studied with John Cheever at The University of Iowa and in the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. According to Wikipedia, Cheever mischievously sold one of Gurganus’ short stories to the New Yorker without telling him first. This collection of four novellas won the 2001 Lambda [...]