Gay Street: Stories of Knoxville, Tennessee [Paperback]

Jack Mauro (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 18, 2000

Two friends are drawn into a mystery of love and murder from a past they cannot know; a boy clumsily carries a broken heart through a day of parades; a woman exacts a daily revenge for a suspected crime from a husband long since gone; and love gleefully appears out of nowhere on a wet afternoon, on Gay Street.Gay Street. In these fourteen stories, a Northern writer documents, teases and exalts the lives walking or pausing on this Southern, and very real, avenue in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Formerly of New York and Florida, Mr. Mauro made his home in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1994.

Product Details

• Paperback: 188 pages
• Publisher: iUniverse (September 18, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0595125727
• ISBN-13: 978-0595125722
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 5.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,040,514 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finding the old in new tales of a special town, July 24, 2002

By 

R. Tiedemann "Sunnye" (Bellevue, NE USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gay Street: Stories of Knoxville, Tennessee (Paperback)

I spent the first 30 years of my life in Knoxville, so when Mauro mentions buying something on Market Street I remember the old Market House with its smells of fresh blood at the butcher's, sawdust and lilacs by the flower stalls. In my mind I see the row of farmer's dilapidated trucks parked alongside with their wooden boxes of fruits and vegetables fresh from the mountain truck farms -- bright green spinach and crisp green beans, sunny yellow squash and crimson strawberries.

He mentions Cherokee Hills and I remember Cherokee Boulevard in Sequoyah Hills, where I grew up. At his reference to the S&W Cafeteria I think of Lois Harris playing the organ there on Thursday nights, and the Disney cartoons they showed for the children after dinner.

So this book is really two books for me. Mauro speaks of Knoxville of the 1980s and 1990s and makes me remember the Knoxville from 1940s to 1970s. So how could I not like the book?

Krutch Park didn't exist when I lived there, but I was born on Clinch Avenue at Fort Sanders Hospital. He mentions Highland Avenue and I remember that James Agee lived there even before my time and in the 1960s Hollywood came to town to make a movie of his book, DEATH IN THE FAMILY, starring Robert Preston.

I think this is the first time I've ever seen a book I could barely read for the memories it prompts. I'm amused by the story of a young couple haunted by questions about a past they could never know -- 1952. It was that year and near that place when my date and I were returning to the parking lot from a movie at the Tennessee Theater one warm summer night and heard a woman scream. Could it have been...???

The World's Fair, the YMCA, the Bijou Theater, Gay and State Streets -- places in these stories that revive more memories from the Knoxville I knew.

Needless to say, reading this delightful look at contemporary Knoxville was not only a joy from the average reader's point of view, it was a trip into nostalgia. Mauro captures the new city and yet is able, at the same time, to retrieve the old for those who knew it.

Like Jack Mauro, my husband was born in New Jersey and fell in love with Knoxville when he came there as a young graduate student at UT. There is something magic about that place, and Mauro has done a fine job of putting some of that magic on the page.

Ruth Fulton Tiedemann

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The world in one city, December 3, 2000

By 

Ann (Knoxville) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gay Street: Stories of Knoxville, Tennessee (Paperback)

I have to say I wasn't eager to read this. A friend told me to buy a copy. Now I owe that friend a favor. This book is a series of stories, each one set in downtown Knoxville. Frankly I'm a little tired of this city's fascination with itself -- but this book takes Knoxville into the world. While the stories all take place here, they are so real and so human that the location doesn't matter. Mr. Mauro does manage to capture Southern quirkiness but the entire effect is a loving, sometimes sad and often funny look at just plain people. I think anyone could relate to these characters, or find them as interesting as I did. What's more, there's a wonderful balance between sadness and the humor of life both everyday or in the great turning points we face. I was sorry to come to the last story and I'll be looking out for Mauro's next effort.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars great surprise, March 25, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Gay Street: Stories of Knoxville, Tennessee (Paperback)

A relative in TN sent me this book. I loved it. Don't think that because it is set in Knoxville it is limited - I would say that the author could change the names of the streets and the stories could be from anywhere. Each one is very real and true to life, even the stranger ones. I am reading it again, in fact!