TAKE ME WITH YOU
STEVEN ROWLEY
G.P. Putnam's Sons (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now
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 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 tje 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.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
THE DOGS OF VENICE
STEVEN ROWLEY
G.P. Putnam's Sons (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebok, available now
Rating: 4* of five
The Publisher Says: From the New York Times bestselling author of The Celebrants and The Guncle, a heartwarming story about finding oneself in one of the most romantic cities on Earth.
After months of planning a romantic holiday getaway in Venice, Paul is blindsided when his five-year marriage suddenly unravels. Fueled by heartbreak, Paul endeavors to take the trip alone.
Soon after arriving in Italy, he notices a small, scruffy, self-assured dog trotting alongside a canal with the confidence he so desperately wants for himself. When their paths cross again, Paul feels compelled to learn how his new four-legged friend thrives on his own. Amid the food, sights, and welcoming people of Venice, Paul’s journey culminates in a magical encounter that leads him to feel real connection—to a dog, to a foreign city and, most importantly, to himself.
Capturing Steven Rowley's signature wit, insight, and indelible characters, The Dogs of Venice offers another timeless story of love lost, and independence found—a holiday tonic for the soul.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: What an awful December Paul is having: the collapse of his love; the need to hide from his lovely supportive friends while the wounds that Christastime-dealt betrayal gave flensed him to the bone start to heal; because let's be so real here...he has to go on the not-romantic-anymore trip to Venice that he planned to take with Darren, the now-ex, at a some expense so he's not around as Darren moves out, which...acceptable. He's rented a cool apartment though it turns out his landlady's got zero English and this presents some amusing miscommunications.
Also, as ways to re-enter singlehood go, a trip to Venice is fire. Most romantic sinking ruin since Atlantis, plus hot Italian guys? Sign me up for the broken-heart tour. Paul even succumbs to the sensualty of Venice by having a fling. I was glad it was just that, a fling, and at the end of the story Paul takes home some lonely introspective walks with one of Venice's stray dogs, some fairly basic grief-processing that gave me very mild hope for his post-Darren future, and a real sadness that there's such a homeless-hound problem in Venice.
I don't think this is peak Rowley, but I do think it was 93 minutes very well spent. It took me away from my deeply grouchy mood that's hung over since yesterday. For that alone, I'd give it four stars; it deserves them more for the way a slightly co-dependent man starts facing up to the cost of couplehood über alles and starting out on the path of learning how much alone gives and how little loneliness is actually in it.
