Customer Reviews

First Comes Love

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I only read this book because our reading group chose it and, frankly, at first I wasn't sure I'd like it. I didn't feel that I could relate to Marion Winik's drug use or self-destructive pursuit of a gay man. But her writing drew me in and her story proved to be so absorbing because it was so well-written. Yes, she was self-absorbed, as addicts often are, and yes, she knew her love for Tony was bound to end in frustration, but she has no sympathy for herself, and asks for none from her readers. Her story, while moving, is not cloying or sentimental, and I really liked that. She is honest, often painfully so, and direct. She reveals what it truly means to love someone who cannot love you back the way you want to be loved. She faces her problems head-on, addresses her own weaknesses with candor. Her writing style is clear and its emotions sharply drawn. If you approach her story without judging her, you will come to know her and understand her. I liked her in spite of myself, and that says a lot. Like a good friend you care about, but who can drive you crazy, Winik reveals things to you that can make you roll your eyes or sigh in frustration, make you want to slap her. And then she opens up with vulnerability, revealing her inner turmoil and pain, and you want to embrace her. This is a tough story, hard to take sometimes. But a true love story, nonetheless. After I read the whole book, I went back and re-read its opening chapter. After going on Winik's journey with her, her words about her husband's final hours brought me to tears. I felt I knew them both.

Marion Winik's funny, honest, and ultimately gut-wrenching memoir First Comes Love answers, in the end, what true love is. In clear, unwavering prose, Winik tells of her meeting, marrying, having two children with Tony Heubach, a gay ice-skater. Given their differing sexual orientations -- Winik is straight -- sex never was a big part of their relationship. Drugs, however, were, and it is the drugs which first brought the two together and drove them apart as Tony desperately sought any respite from the AIDS that killed him (neither Winik nor their two children ever tested positive). The most accurate phrase I can come up for Winik and Tony is that they were "soul mates", and this compatibility on levels more intimate than intercourse made their relationship work. Involving as it does drug addiction and AIDS, many parts of this book are sad. Winik and Tony, however, shared many good times together, including a number of years when they were off drugs, were happily married with young children, and before Tony became symptomatic. This book deserves a wide audience both for its honesty and for Winik's marvelous writing.

Yes, the two main people in this memoir are self-indulgent, but there is one, and only one, thread that holds them together: Love. It cannot be sexual attraction, because one is gay and one is straight. And the thread of love holds and holds and holds and finally snaps. Marion Winik's writing held me from the first chapter to the last and never snapped.

This is one of my all-time favorite books by my favorite writer. I used to read Marion Winik's cloumns in the local newspaper when I lived in Austin and have always been a fan of her writing style.

I recommend this book to everyone and they all can't believe how much they enjoy it. When you first read the book synopsis on the back cover it sounds as if the story was pulled from one of those cheesy tv-movie-of-the-weeks. But Winik's story and the voice with which she tells it is so engaging and inspirational. Her words never reflect any kind of self-pity, as is often seen in many of the memoirs published recently. Instead her writing is wry, clever and very witty. This book will honestly make you laugh and cry. After reading this book you'll feel like Marion Winik is one of your close friends or wish she was.

A Christmas gift, off a request list of mine (!), this book was a complete surprise to me. I groaned after reading the back cover with the summary on it... Winik, an occasional commentator on NPR's, "All Things Considered", married the love of her life in New Orleans a number of years ago - an improbable match: he gay, she straight, both heavy drug users. As I said, I groaned reading this but then started the book. In a touching, powerful voice, Winik describes the falling in love, the marriage, the birth of their two boys, and her husband's terrible death from AIDS. The book is inspirational and extremely well written. Winik's narrative and acute observations are a gift. Early in the book she sold me, "When you think how much of a person's beauty is in their eyes, it is astonishing how beautiful they can be with them closed in sleep, perhaps as when you suddenly notice how talented the members of a chorus line are once the stars of the show have left the stage." This is a sad and beautifully written book in tribute to a loved one. Well worth the read. 

Amazing, isn't it, how one person's non-fiction tale is another person's bizarre cautionary fable. In "First Comes Love", Marion Winik tells us all she can of her volatile relationship with the beautiful gay man she chose as her husband. It's the parts she can't tell us that may haunt her readers. (Although there is many an opportunity to read between the lines and to figure out that Marion Winik is one helluva scary human being.) A strong woman who offers shelter and unconditional love to the pretty object of her affections, Winik eventually tires of the conjugal set-up she has created (she will adore him, he will let her), and pulls away from her husband (Tony) just as his HIV positive state blooms into your basic, enervating case of AIDS. He's a little depressed about it all--gosh, I wonder why, Marion. Reading this book, one wishes more than anything that it was fiction, that the character of Marion Winik, it's-all-about-me control freak, was a figment of some deviously gifted writer's imagination.That way, maybe we would have heard some of the story in Tony's gentler, more loving vioce. What did he think of the loud, funny woman who loved him so much (but not long enough)? What did he imagine he would have done without her? And what did he see when he looked at their two sons? "First Comes Love" was dedicated to Tony, and he's on nearly every page--we deserve to know more about him than that he loved gardening and Judy Garland. Even Tony's mother (you'll love her!)is more clearly drawn that he is. Makes you wonder--are men quite real to Ms. Winik?

I met Marion at a book fair and she recommended First Comes Love to me as the best of her offerings. I had an idea of what the story contained since my sister is a fan. I can understand how Marion loved Tony, despite having the odds stacked against them. How many times has a woman chosen an unsuitable mate? I think that the drugs caused more of a problem than Tony's homosexuality. And Marion's total honesty! I too could write a somewhat juicy account of my early marriage to an alcoholic wife beater, but to do it fairly, I would have to write about the neurotic girl who married him on the rebound from a heterosexual but no less disastrous relationship. I was happy that Tony and Marion resolved most of the issues that were tearing them apart. She was there for him, and loved him even when it was very hard.

Good biography offers lessons for life - and although my marraige is completely different from the authors I found her story of her husband's deaht from AIDS and her ways of dealing impressive and instructive. Winik suggests that "what is now called denial used to be known as hope" and argues articulately in its favor.

This book was amazing, I truely enjoyed this book, for 2 days I couldnt put it down. It for sure had me captivated. I cant wait to read the others.

This may be the only book I have ever read where I wanted to contact the author and let her know how much her story had moved me. A genuine love story . . . one that left me awash in tears by the time I finished (which was uncomfortable because I was sitting on a beach surrounded by people)! I have recommended this book time and time again to my friends, who wind up thanking me for the loan (and, to date, I've always gotten the book back -- which makes me quite happy)! Marion Winik has a wonderful "voice," a sincere ability to convey emotions without concern that others will sit in judgment . . . I have become quite a fan.