Customer Reviews

Getting Off Clean

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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!

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 ...

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.

Getting Off Clean, a well-paced, compulsively readable debut novel, marks the emergence of Timothy Murphy as a distinctly original voice. Opening in West Mendhem, Mass. during the mid-'80s, the story centers around the relationship between Eric Fitzpatrick (an overachieving high-school senior desperate to escape the suffocation and provincialism of familial burdens and small-town life) and Brooks Jefferson Tremont (a scabrously witty prep-school student reeling from the aftermath of death and emotional abandonment.) They couldn't be more mismatched: Eric is white, a closet case, maddeningly apologetic, at once disdainful of his family and his classmates and in need of their praise and support. Brooks is black, lacking any true sense of family, sophisticated in the manners and culture of the upper class and yet disenfranchised in a school and a society that regards him with suspicion.

The resulting narrative spins wildly through the months they share an illicit affair against the backdrop of murder, xenophobia, white flight, and guilty-liberal gladhanding. At times, such as when Eric is relating a dream bacchanalia near the end of the story, Murphy delivers lush, lyrical prose that exposes truth at the tattered edges of his protagonist's weary psyche. And the scene where Eric instinctively turns away from a poster of a muscle man will have any gay man who was ever in the closet smiling in recognition.

That said, the novel does have several marked flaws. The dialogue is often forced and thus incapable of revealing internal truths about the characters (this is especially true of the supporting characters who lack either the story time or the from-the-viewpoint-of narration Eric gets.) And the third act of the book is marred by tidy resolutions of two key subplots. But Getting Off Clean's most damning flaw is in the author's inability to raise Brooks above a type. It is commendable of the author to deal with race and how it colors people's responses to crime; the scene in the church is a brilliant satire of liberal arrogance. But in the larger context of the story his insights are not original and his treatment of Brooks is insulting. The author also misses a golden oppurtunity to explore racism within the gay community, a rampant and largely-ignored community ill.

In the end, what is on the page is a singular and heart-wrenching account of two boys attempting to come to terms with their sexuality, their lives and their future that will keep you unable to close the book and hoping against hope that, somehow, these two will make it out together when nearly everything suggests they won't.

I think this had to be the most touching book I have ever read. I've read it several times and I always end up in tears by the end.

Although I've never been in a similar situation, I easily identified with the main character, Eric. So much of the turmoil and confusion I remember from growing up was reflected in him. Every time I read this book, I wish I could make Eric make different choices, but I suspect I would have done the same thing in his place. That is what makes this novel so real.

I would highly recommend this wonderful book for everyone.

A wonderful novel. Sexy, very dense, even dramatic whithout ever becoming sentimental. it is one of the best!

Interesting to read about the trials of Eric Fitzpatrick as he muddles his way through his unwitting position as the poster boy for racial harmony while keeping his own lover, who is black and a man, a secret. (You have to wonder back in the height of the Reagan years which aspect of Brooks would have been more upsetting to the "average" folks.) As a rough contemporary of the fictional Eric and Brooks, I found both the racial tensions and the fears associated with coming out to be very true to the times in which they were written. I also liked the juxtaposition of the socio-economic levels -- it was the white boy who was poor and the black boy who was rich. Murphy didn't forget that, either, playing up the reaction of parents of the boys who beat up Brooks upon discovering that Brooks was a rich prep school boy and not your "ordinary" inner city kid.

Some people found the subplots involving Eric's family distracting, but I enjoyed them. For one thing, it helped center Eric and gave him more depth as a character. For another, it gave him a far better foil in Brenda than he ever had in Phoebe, who I found to be annoying.

I do have to agree with other reviewers who found the ending a little pat and contrived. Eric's about-face, if you will, seems too sudden, and I suspect that he will never completely abandon his quest for "conventional" success.

When gay men are mentioned, do you think of cross dressers? Read the book. Do you think it's easy to be a high school senior? Read the book. Have you ever had times when you think your family is going to kill you? Read the book. Do you want an smart, sexy, and touching novel? READ THIS BOOK NOW!

I selected this novel because I am gay and attracted to novels of gay interracial relationships. I found this one to be disappointing.

The author is an accomplished writer in developing plot and telling a story, however I found the characters underdeveloped and the story more about the main character (Eric Fitzpatrick) and his desire of "Getting Off Clean," to be more about his getting away clean from the boring and prejudiced small town of West Mendhem, Massachusetts than coming of age, discovery of sexual identity, or the dynamics of a gay interracial relationship with a troubled rich Black youth (Brooks Tremont).

The story centers on Eric, his mundane life, and interaction with family and friends as he trudges through his last year of highschool and seeks to gain acceptance to Yale. Almost incidental is his meeting and developing friendship with Brooks. For those seeking insight to self discovery, sexual identity, or youthful fumbling (or steamy) sex, look elsewhere; it doesn't happen to these characters. This gay interracial (African-American and Irish-Italian-American) relationship is glossed over to the extent it seems included only to contrast it with the dynamics of community prejudice and racism, not against African-Americans, but "invading" Latinos and Hispanics, perhaps an indictment of real racial tensions of that locale and era.

The plot moves along smoothly and surely to a troubling and perhaps contrived ending; abrupt and not in character with the rest of the book. One only suspects this was done to allow a sequel.

I recommend the book for those wanting to add to their library of gay, coming of age, or interracial gay relationship novels, yet I would caution readers not to get too excited. Anticipate a good read: it's a good story, but as troubling as its characters.

There were times when all we wanted to do was get away, to dump our stinky life and begin a new one. Eric Fitzpatrick longs for it and his way through is his application to Yale. But someone would appear, that someone who would carry Eric along a sorted journey of tribulations and hard times, as well as a new kind of feeling that the protagonist had been denying all along: his awakening sexuality. Brooks will be from the very start the departing point from his everyday life. The carrier of the unusual and unexpected. Staged on a small town in Massachusetts, "Getting off clean" not only explores the sensation of acknowledging one's homosexuality but also the stirring of sharing an unequal turbulent relationship. Murphy evokes wonderfully "young love" and showers it with a freshness and tenderness making it all the more cherishable and lovable. Definitely, simplicity is also a quality that the book has, framing a tale that calls for reason; a story that shares many things that we all have and went through, and a book that owns one of those daring ends that makes you feel that this volume was worth reading.