Getting Off Clean [Hardcover]

Timothy Murphy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 15, 1997

The one thing that Eric Fitzpatrick wants is to escape--both from his family and the racially tense town in which he lives. The only son of an Italian-Irish family in a working class suburb of boston, he intends to go away to college and leave his old life far bhind. But all his plans are set askew when he meets Brooks, a mysterious, wealthy, black student at a local prep school. As their relationship grows ever deeper and more complicated, Eric must come to terms not only with his family and community, bu with his warring ambitions and desires.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Gay male coming-out novels usually deal more with the personal than with the political, but Getting Off Clean encompasses both. Eric Fitzpatrick is a bright, high school senior in Mendham, a working-class town in Massachusetts. He is determined to fit in, be popular, and go to college. The only problem is that he is gay and just coming out--a problem complicated when he begins having an affair with Brooks Tremont, a black student who attends a prestigious prep school outside of town. When racial violence breaks out in Mendham, both Eric and Brooks have to make some serious choices. Getting Off Clean, deftly written and incredibly smart, challenges us to think in new ways about sexuality, class, race, and the accomplishments of gay fiction.

From Library Journal

Murphy's debut is an extraordinary tale of young, forbidden love worth reading for both its topical matter and its style. In the suburban town of West Mendhem, Massachusetts, gay, townie, over-achieving high school senior Eric Fitzpatrick lives with his pregnant, unmarried older sister; a Down Syndrome younger one; their excitable mother and placid father; and an Old World grandmother. He falls in love with rich, unstable, black Brooks Tremont, a rebellious student at the local private academy. As a local murder causes racial strife to erupt between West Mendhem and a neighboring Latino community, Eric is forced to confront the narrowness of his upbringing. This is an old story?readers will recognize everyone from Eric's two hippie friends to the Italian aunties?but in Murphy's hands it is brilliantly told, with economy of language and a sure hand. Murphy is more than a writer to watch, he is one to read now. Highly recommended.?Harold Augenbraum, Mercantile Lib., New York
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 322 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1st edition (February 15, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312151322
• ISBN-13: 978-0312151324
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,316,223 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you liked GETTING OFF CLEAN, check out THE BREEDERS BOX, April 20, 2001

By 

Timothy Murphy (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Getting Off Clean (Stonewall Inn Editions) (Paperback)

Just a note: GETTING OFF CLEAN author Tim Murphy has another novel called THE BREEDERS BOX, thus far only published in the U.K., but you can get it at amazon.co.uk (or just hit the UK site link at the bottom of this page). The setting changes from a small Massachusetts town to glamorous downtown New York City at the end of the decadent 1980s, but the same great characters, fast pace and bighearted sarcasm are there...but the lovably foul-mouthed older sister in GETTING OFF CLEAN has been supplanted by an even more memorable one who's kind of like a cross between Holly Golightly and Parker Posey in PARTY GIRL...this is another Murphy page-turner with a mindblowing finale!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A great novel about escapism and discrimination, October 31, 2000

By 

J. A. Elkink (Dublin, Ireland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Getting Off Clean (Hardcover)

A very well written book about the experiences of a highschool student living in a small town in the north of the US, where racial tensions are strong and where it is a rough environment to come out of the closet. Eric, the main character, lives in a very closed-minded family, with its own internal problems, and feels stuck. The only thing he really wants is to get out. The whole novel seems to be about this general idea: escapism. How to get out of this closed-minded town, with its hypocratic political attitudes - e.g. the assembly of people in the church after a rising of racial tendencies - and its strong conventional morals. The character Eric falls in love with, Brooks, an upper class black highschool student, is doing that all his life: escaping ... getting dropped out of school every time. And his family is not much different, with his father moving away from him and his mother to the warm south and his mother leaving him to go to Europe and get out of America. The whole affair between Eric and Brooks seems to be on the edge of loosing themselves in their romance and longing to escape. Eric, who is deeply 'grounded' in his family and environment can handle more easily then Brooks, who is alone on the world, and too smart not to take his ideas in its full consequences, and who almost loses it. I really loved reading this book and I was very touched. Probably because 'escapism' is a feeling I can too well understand. The book is much more about that - the breathless space of the own environment and the dreams of getting away - then it is purely about homosexuality or coming out. The end was a slight disappointment to me, since it ends too 'glorious', as seems to be typical at least for American movies. A must to read for anyone who wants to read about the other side of American moral values ...

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars sensitive book with great stroy telling, February 28, 2000

By 

J. McChesney (Buffalo, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Getting Off Clean (Hardcover)

Agreeing with other readers, it is refreshing to find a book dealing with issues of coming out in both social and political light. The portrayal of small town attitudes towards race and sexuality, both the bigotry and the well intentioned, if misplaced, liberal attitudes is realistic. The heart wrenching decisions made by protagonist Eric Fitzpatrick kept me mesmerized, but the depiction of Brooks was rather limited and one dimensional.

The strong point of Mr. Murphy's writing does not lie in complicated technique and fine character development, but in his ability as a great storyteller, able to pull me back in to the novel every time my attention started to stray. Although the relationship between Eric and Brooks seemed doomed from the onset, I kept hoping for some resolution to bring them together, right down to the final pages of the book.

Despite some flaws in character development of Brooks and the secondary characters, this was a fine read and a sensitive handling of a young man coming to terms with himself and the world in which he lives.