It surprised me that readers didn't see coming the news about Lureen. I thought there were so many hints, but it's just as well that people didn't put all the pieces together before now. I was thinking along these lines before Love And Other Drugs came out. I hadn't yet given the color separation house salesman a name yet, but when I learned the salesman's name in LAOD was Jamie, that gave me a road map.
Storytelling at its best, as always. A few of the stand-out sentences for me:
He'd become curious about me; Jack had a "type" he was attracted to back then but didn't realize it.
This strikes a chord and makes me wonder why we are drawn to the people we choose to love, it’s always been a question I’ve had. And did Ennis also have a “type”, or was Jack, in any guise, always Jack, to him?
…delicate webs of connection that are invisible to most people. They possess a sensitivity that enables them, like a spider that feels the vibrations of a struggling fly, to look at a man and know he is stuck. Elliot was the spider king.
Sad that Ennis sees himself as “being stuck”….I like “delicate webs of connection”. Is this reference to Elliot also meant to show Ennis that way…..or perhaps just the opposite??
Love the way you slipped this in …whereas I was in torment for four fucking years
……..he would take your name away. He would make sure that your name disappeared from the story of his life even if he couldn't erase you as a
( ... )
AWWW Ennis clearly has a type because when he was a teenager and talking to Jack Tornado on the phone, he imagined him looking the way Jack Twist does. When he discovered that JackTornado was actually named Chris Perkins and had red hair and glasses, he was devastated. But as he tells himself in that early chapter, just because Jack Tornado looked nothing like the way he imagined him, as Chris Perkins he still cared about Ennis. But (if I recall correctly), he reflects that if they had been in school together, he would not have sought out Chris as a friend because he sensed that Chris was another misfit and Ennis wanted to belong to the mainstream. It was a scene from About A Boy that gave me this idea. In that movie, the main character is rejected by the two misfit boys he is drawn to because, they tell him, they make a bigger target if there are three of them
( ... )
Well done recap of the story so far. (When did you start this?) Felt a bit Like a Hitchcock-esque movie that goes back over previous scenes from a different perspective so you see things you missed the first time.
Then you throw in something completely new and expected (Jack had just learned that only Lureen was infected) and I'm chomping for the next chapter which of course still leaves me aching for Lureen.
I started thinking about this story in the spring of 2009, began writing during the summer and first posted in the autumn. The germ of it came from a few of sources, including finding a journal I kept briefly in the 80s during an affair with a man Kaj is based on (but not 100% of course!). Some of the entries detailed things I'd completely forgotten about -- and that I never thought I'd forget. The other influence was seeing a film called The Visitor, set in New York. Look it up on imdb.com if you're curious. And finally, Elliot is inspired by a friend who died of AIDS in 1985. Some of AWWW is his story.
I never imagined I'd still be writing this 3 years later... Thanks for sticking with it!
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So, so true. And I've done it.
The night I saw him at the John Lennon shrine, Jack had just learned that only Lureen was infected.
Did NOT see that coming!! Wow. You're pulling this together masterfully!
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A few of the stand-out sentences for me:
He'd become curious about me; Jack had a "type" he was attracted to back then but didn't realize it.
This strikes a chord and makes me wonder why we are drawn to the people we choose to love, it’s always been a question I’ve had. And did Ennis also have a “type”, or was Jack, in any guise, always Jack, to him?
…delicate webs of connection that are invisible to most people. They possess a sensitivity that enables them, like a spider that feels the vibrations of a struggling fly, to look at a man and know he is stuck. Elliot was the spider king.
Sad that Ennis sees himself as “being stuck”….I like “delicate webs of connection”. Is this reference to Elliot also meant to show Ennis that way…..or perhaps just the opposite??
Love the way you slipped this in
…whereas I was in torment for four fucking years
……..he would take your name away. He would make sure that your name disappeared from the story of his life even if he couldn't erase you as a ( ... )
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Then you throw in something completely new and expected (Jack had just learned that only Lureen was infected) and I'm chomping for the next chapter which of course still leaves me aching for Lureen.
Love this story,.
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I never imagined I'd still be writing this 3 years later... Thanks for sticking with it!
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I liked best, the paragraph about the events that led Ennis to both Kaj and Jack.
It was sad to learn how much Ennis’s small gestures, with the reply to the fax and the postcard meant to a sad and lonely Jack.
It was a shock to learn that Lureen is HIV, I never equated the glimpses of the sadness we have seen in her to illness of this magnitude.
Thank you
Lorna
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