Customer Reviews

Adam & Steve: A Novel

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I loved this book. Check it out. I'm sure you'll enjoy it as well.

This book was really a fun read. If you are expecting a epic novel like the Thornbirds or Cold Blood, this isn't it. This is just a really fun, feel good read. It's why everyone went to those old musicals like White Christmas, or Singing in the Rain. To escape and feel good. Adam and Steve met each other breifly in the 80's after a night of partying then parted suddenly and went on with their lives to become and recovering alchoholic and a physchologist. They meet years later, not remembering their previous meeting, and fall madly in love. They each have quirky best friend. When they discover they had once met each other in the past, it threatens to destroy what they have now. Will their quirky friends be able to get these two back on track? Who'll win the two-step dance-off? Read the book. You'll have a blast.

This book was really a fun read. If you are expecting a epic novel like the Thornbirds or Cold Blood, this isn't it. This is just a really fun, feel good read. It's why everyone went to those old musicals like White Christmas, or Singing in the Rain. To escape and feel good. Adam and Steve met each other breifly in the 80's after a night of partying then parted suddenly and went on with their lives to become and recovering alchoholic and a physchologist. They meet years later, not remembering their previous meeting, and fall madly in love. They each have quirky best friend. When they discover they had once met each other in the past, it threatens to destroy what they have now. Will their quirky friends be able to get these two back on track? Who'll win the two-step dance-off? Read the book. You'll have a blast.

I had the good fortune to see Adam and Steve (the movie) this summer at Outfest, Los Angeles. It's absolutely hilarious, over the top and raunchy at times, but deeply romantic as well. Reading the novel by screenwriter/director/star Craig Chester gave me my Adam and Steve "fix" as I wait for its release next Spring (in the same way that the Latter Days novelization did a couple of years ago).
It's unusual that a gay film should get a novelization, and even more unusual that it should be written by the screenwriter. Chester knows his characters inside/out, and the novel allows the reader to see inside their souls, to experience what's happening in their minds and hearts in the way that a film can only suggest.
The novel emphasizes the romance; the film is funnier.
Both are well worth your time!
Thanks to Craig Chester for writing as romantic a gay novel as I've ever read, and thanks too for casting two out gay actors in the film's leading roles (Chester as Adam and Malcolm Gets as Steve.)
Read the novel today and be sure to see the film next year.

He's not the world's greatest actor and so it's only fitting that in ADAM AND STEVE Craig Chester proves that he's not the world's greatest novelist either. Are we supposed to go easy on ADAM & STEVE because it's a novelization (of a forthcoming film that Chester wrote and stars in) and "not really a novel"? OK. In that case I can say that having read the novelization I can imagine that the movie should be really funny in the vein of THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY crossed with the romantic zaniness of SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE or WHEN HARRY MET SALLY. Adam and Steve tell each other that they're real people, "not Julia or Meg," but actually they *are* Julia and Meg whether they admit ro it or not.

They met once, long ago, before the main action of the picture begins, and they instantly take to each other despite very different life styles and outfits. Their brief romance leads to a bout of lovemaking that can only be described as farcically disgusting a la Jonathan Swift, the kind of thing that, should it ever happen to you, sheer enbarrassment would cause you to sink beneath the ground in shame and let the grass spread over your grave. Certainly it would be the kind of thing that you would rather die rather than look your sex partner in the eye again. Well, years later Adam and Steve meet up again but neither of them recognizes the other, which is fortunate for them.

Craig Chester to put it mildly lacks the talent of a novelist for even describing things or finishing a sentence. I imagine he is a great guy in real life and, having read his memoir, I know he is a survivor. He'll go on to bigger and better things having gotten the bizarre emotional sludge of ADAM & STEVE out of his system and, who knows, he may write a sequel if the film does okay.