Customer Reviews

Harlan's Race: A Novel

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

 

 

"Harlan's Race" doesn't feel as much a sequel, as a continuation. The book picks up right where the "Front Runner" left off, with Billy Sive being murdered at the Olympic Games, and it's aftermath.I was glad I had re-read "...Runner" before I started this because it helped keep the characters fresh in my mind. Nell Warren succeeds in keeping Harlan's voice a barometer of the changing times as the seventies gives way to the somewhat more tolerant 80s.The backbone of the book is really a mystery novel with an apparent accomplice in Billy's murder still loose and aiming at Harlan. I thought for the most part this was successful although the identity of the mystery person began to be telegraphed towards the end which took some suspense out of it.My only other slight disappointment with the book was the leaping of years towards the end to bring the story closer to the present. Knowing this book may be part of a total of four books, I almost wish she'd taken more time and detailed the years that are lost by being summarized on a few pages. Still I was glad to be back in Harlan's head for a while. It felt like talking with an old friend.

How do you write a sequel to a gay American classic? Ask Patricia Nell Warren. She's done it! I can't say that I was always happy with the choices she made but I have to agree that they were the right ones.

No, this isn't the Front Runner. But then no book could be. The 70's offered the gay male a new sensibility about his sexuality. It allowed him to realize that he was not some horrible outcast in modern society. The Front Runner was a romance that gay men had been waiting for since the beginning of time. Where E. M. Forster's Maurice was a romance, it unrealistically allowed the characters to have an unqualified happy ending. Warren did not. Warren gave her characters flesh, blood, and oxygen that had been so lacking in so many previous gay themed novels. I cried my eyes out when I first read The Front Runner. Because I had waited almost twenty years for the sequel, I tore through it with a vengeance. We can't hope for the love and joy that we experienced reading The Front Runner. That wonderful book's ending couldn't allow Harlan's Race to be nearly as idealistic or uplifting. However, it does provide us with a carefully crafted, believable memorial to gay fiction's (possibly most loved) character: Billy Sive. In twenty years I've moved from Billy's age to Harlan's and I found that his skin fit me well. Read this book, if you've read the first one. If not, start there and work your way forward. This is great storytelling. Warren's books should be required reading for Pat Robertson and his contemporaries. Maybe then, they would understand "forbidden love".

I have to give the book four stars instead of five simply because it's missing my favorite character.

Reading Harlan's Race for the first time is like a refreshing slap to the face. I love The Frontrunner and Billy but in a way, throughout the years and the way it has been heralded as THE gay classic of all time, has made it seem less realistic and almost fable-like and surreal (despite the shocking conclusion).

This book relates the events that happened after Billy's murder and maybe, I can relate to it more, because it deals with death and rebirth, agony and triumph, hatred and love in a way that is more tangible, even grittier and harsher than but nonetheless as beautiful as the Frontrunner.

Having read the other review posted here, it made me aware that some people may not get the beauty, wisdom and craft portrayed in HARLAN'S RACE, the second in THE FRONT RUNNER series... obviously this other reader did not get it.

What astounds me --having read THE FRONT RUNNER, HARLAN'S RACE and BILLY'S BOY, the three to date in the series-- is the fact that Patricia Nell Warren is able to capture the essence and nuance of three very different decades, each with their own subtle --and not-so-subtle-- shadings on the emotional, political and socioeconomic fronts. A difficult task to capture in one decade. Yet Nell Warren does so over a span of three diverse decades in this tome.

Even more fascinating is the fact she deeply and richly inhabits the psyche of the gay male who has survived the loss of a love... and then has to watch several generations be taken away by a scourge equally or more heinous than the assassin's bullet that took Billy from Harlan.

As a man who has lived through this --I have been HIV + for over 17 years and lost a love and thousands of dear, loving and beloved people-- I speak from experience when I say Nell Warren has, with HARLAN'S RACE, pinpointed an accuracy that pierces deeply into that mindset and takes us on the long, hollow pursuit of life, liberty and happiness that always seems a stride away. Harlan races towards something he can't grasp, and his attempts to reach out for and fill a void no one can fathom the depths of until living it is deeply moving. Our author, through the voice of our protaganist, takes us into these landscapes honestly, and at times, a bit brutally. But always eloquently.

HARLAN'S RACE also has a fair amount of suspense, with some harrowing stalking in some dark, psychologically twisted terrain. If you loved Billy in THE FRONT RUNNER, you HAVE to read HARLAN'S RACE to have some questions answered, including by a few very "not-right" individuals that are portrayed in a manner consistent with the psychos some of our right-wing organizations churns out with their agendas of hate and intolerance. Scary, but very real... these people DO exist!

As well, in HARLAN'S RACE we get to find out more about some of our favorites from THE FRONT RUNNER. The Prescott's --including the matriarch of this extended family, the ever lovely and deeply loving Marian-- return, and we watch how our heroine handles some of the major changes life hands to all of us at some point. Betsy Heden returns as does Vince Matti, that smouldering sexual seething rebel who goes through a life change or two as well. And someone we only briefly met before, Chino, one of the bodyguards, begins slowly unfolding before us in HARLAN'S RACE, though always a dark secret remains. An enigma that I would love to see more of, Chino understands Harlan's loss all too well.

HARLAN'S RACE is different than THE FRONT RUNNER. Just as you and I are different in the 1990's from what we were in the 1980's and the 1970's. While sometimes our changes may seem awkward and we feel lost in our life changes, these are all very real and tangible characteristics all of us live through.

Patricia Nell Warren boldly explores these life changes with her characters in HARLAN'S RACE, seeming to live with them and grow --or stagnate at times-- as all real humans do. For this, my hat is off... not many authors are willing to go these multi-saga and multi-generational distances with their literary creations. She does so, and the results are haunting, harrowing and heroic in HARLAN'S RACE.

A race worth running and reading, I highly recommend HARLAN'S RACE, a front runner in its own right.

I thought I knew "all about" the various ways fiction can be written, but this book showed me a way new to me--whether it's the best way or not?... The book's pattern first eluded me, then confused/annoyed me, then "worked" well enough for me. The pattern is to build via plot-twists: suddenly-emerging changes or new appearances. Like the reader is always made to turn some abrupt corner into a development NOT carefully-foreshadowed. Not unbelievable, just emerging with a jolt. Is this method a cheap shot and thus confusing? or truthful to life-events after all?

For instance, suddenly "bang" Prescott College up and closes its doors, due to money problems. Nobody saw it coming. Then suddenly "bang" Vince who had been training to be a militant gay terrorist, up and drops his violence to work within the system. Who knew or even suspected? Then suddenly "bang" Harlan's son re-enters his life, then "bang" is condemned for this by his homophobic family, then "bang" it's okay after all.

After a dozen or so out-of-the-blue twists-and-turns like these, I for one started to feel yanked around on some chain or other. What ever happend to good fiction's organic gradual evolution of elements with foreshadowings?

And yet author Warren DOES work these slam-bang eruptions thematically. Idea-wise, she makes each new event carefully carry truths, both gay-specific and also human-general. And emotion-wise, Warren does make the sudden shift contain its emotion which she did not fabricate up, but truly felt, via punch plus empathy.

So after all, the novel did end up working for me the picky (?) fiction-buff--at least mostly. It will probably work even better for "you," those readers who are more open to varied fictional forms. Enjoy Patricia Nell Warren's stamp of style--if not the first tier of fiction, still suave and sensitive after her fashion which her fans love.

As history shows, most sequels are often a rehash of the previous work, films - books - etc. But Ms. Warren had established so much history in the original book, The Front Runner, that this sequel works on many levels. I was only a little disappointed by a secondary plot involving a man from Harlan's past as boy who has a hideous back story to him. In some ways, it hurt my memory of the original novel a bit, and gave this book a "Hollywood" type story line that I didn't really appreciate. The story is wonderful, and its nice to revist these characters again. This is truly a book for the people who loved the original so much that you need to know what happens next.

A wonderful book. I couldn't put it down. When you read this book you laugh you cry. All I can say is Bravo.....Patricia Bravo

Do you ever feel so silly sometimes when you miss something important? That's how I felt about this sequel to one of my all time favorite books, "The Front Runner".

Fortunately I read some of the reviews of Patrica Warrens first in this series and realized "Harlans Race" existed. I found myself excited to have the chance to rekindle my affection for these characters.

In this look at Harlans life after Billy's demise, we see an even edgier, harder, Harlan. And rightfully so. These 20 years later...times are tougher.

From lusting after Vince, to militant gay politics to Harlans secretive seductive past, we are privy to an emotional ride.

I admire the way Ms. Warren captures our very essence of humanistic nature. One does not have to be gay to appreciate this...just open minded.

Thanks--CDS

I read THE FRONT RUNNER several years ago, and I re-read it before reading HARLAN'S RACE. FRONT RUNNER was a jewel of linear storytelling. HARLAN'S RACE tried to cover too many angles: Harlan and Vince; Harlan and Chino; Harlan and Marian and Betsy and Falcom; the search for LEV.; AIDS; political issues; and on and on. And there was Harlan's continuous guilty whine for Billy while lusting for Chino and Vince.

Seem Warren tried to wrap up all the loose ends of FRONT RUNNER. But, story would have been stronger and more interested if Warren had selected a focus. But sequals seem never to live up to the first big book.

The sequel to The Front Runner, Harlan's Race takes us back to the 1976 Montreal Olympics and the death of Harlan's young lover Billy Sive. Harlan tells the story looking back from 1990 as he takes us over the events since that fateful day and the subsequent five years.

We follow the arrival of Billy's son along with the lives of those closest to Harlan, including his two other young runners Vince and Jacques. His two bodyguards Harry and Chino are still with him, as are Steve Goodnight and his young protégé the damaged Angel, and many others.

Harlan is now being plagued by a mystery stalker believed to be the partner of the sniper who took out Billy, and the threat seems to extend to those closest to him, but another unseen stalker is at large, a killer that appears indiscriminately to be targeting gay men and whose identity will not begin to become recognised until the early 1980s; while Harlan and his gay bodyguards grapple with the problem of his own tormentor, he will see many of his friends claimed by this other dark mystery.

As for his love life, Harlan finds himself pursued now by Vince, but Vince is as volatile as ever, and they seem unable to hold onto one another. At the same time Harlan finds himself drawn by Chino, but Chino has his own troubled past to deal with and has problems making a commitment.

Harlan's Race is a worthy successor to the Front Runner, while it might appear at times to be without any real direction it says much for the power of the characters PNW has created that out attention is held simply following their interactions. However the story does build steadily towards the inevitable showdown and the stalkers revealing, and to a satisfying conclusion tinged with the sadness of what has been lost along the way.