Onyx [Hardcover]

Felice Picano (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2001

What is the measure of a man's life? Success? Love? Friendship. Ray Henriques has them all, and more, but lately its not enough. But it is not just Ray who is on a quest for deeper meaning and understanding of life's extraordinary landscape. For Jesse, Ray's lover of ten years, it is a quest accelerated by his imminent death from AIDS. And for young married father of two Mike Tedesco, it is a search for the heart of masculinity. The sexual exploration which begins when Ray and Mike meet awakens a restlessness in both men, which resoundingly alters their future paths. As Ray's life begins to draw him increasingly into the future, a future without Jesse, he attempts to tether himself to the here and now with frequent visits to a past where life's answers seemed simpler and more meaningful. But when Jesse's fundamentalist Christian mother rolls into town to take charge of her son's final weeks, he is yanked from his reverie to face an opponent unlike any he has ever known. Marked by shifting points of view and Picano's use of humor, descriptive brilliance, and unexpected revelation, Onyx is a multifaceted exploration of inner lives, motivation, love, and the sometimes hollow center beneath a polished surface.

Felice Picano is the author of 18 books, including the international best-sellers The Book of Lies and Like People in History, as well as the acclaimed literary memoirs Ambidextrous, Men Who Loved Me and A House on the Ocean, A House on the Bay. He has been nominated for several Lambda Literary Awards, and is a winner of the Ferro-Grumley award for fiction. A longtime resident of New York, he currently lives in Los Angeles.

CHAPTER ONE

A stark, golden shaft of 7:15 a.m. October sunlight gleamed through a minute slit formed by two unevenly closed slats in a vertical blind, sparkling in the otherwise darkened bedroom. Light ped across the tousled, multileveled linen of the double bed upon which one male form slept, torso twisted, arms and legs extended, bent to configure a flawed letter X, nearly a swastika. Light spilled off the ivory comforter's tufted edge, briefly spangling the carpet, inducing its royal blue and pale tan pattern t

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Jesse and Ray, a longtime Brooklyn couple, are quietly adjusting to Jesse's rapid decline in health. It's 1992, and there's little that medicine can do for the AIDS-stricken Jesse. After the successful completion of his last ad campaign, he leaves his firm and settles in at home. In the meantime, the two men have taken on Ray's teenage nephew and 9-year-old niece, and Ray, a music producer, has begun a sexual affair with a straight married truck driver. All seems to be going smoothly, the transitions gradual, the pain modulated by love, until Jesse's vengeful mother arrives to exert her will over Jesse's last months. Onyx is one of Picano's best books, a consistently interesting story recounted in flexible, detailed prose, flowering now and then into luminous descriptive passages that rival the work of the best American novelists. --Regina Marler

From Publishers Weekly

In the 20 years since the emergence of AIDS as a national health crisis, few writers have chronicled the disease's enormous impact on the nation's social and cultural landscape as has Picano (Like People in History; Ambidextrous, etc.). He turns inward with his new novel to explore the essence of sexual boundaries, love, and illness as a catalyst for personal analysis and growth. Ray Henrique, owner of a small record company, strives to maintain a little stability in his life while he cares for his longtime lover, Jesse, who is slowly surrendering to the relentless ravages of AIDS. The emotional demands of serving as dutiful caretaker do nothing to curb his hunger for sexual and romantic adventure, a situation remedied by his seduction (endorsed by Jesse) of Mike Tedesco, a young, married repairman with three children. Against an ever-shifting backdrop of eccentric characters, Ray and Mike embark on a physical relationship that forces both men to confront their notions of love, sex and masculinity and their conclusions are riddled with more questions than answers. Meanwhile, Picano takes a graphic yet compassionate approach to detailing Jesse's decline, and some fine comic moments arise when Adele, Jesse's horrible mother, takes center stage. Striking in its bold depictions of both pleasure and pain, this novel is more introspective than previous Picano books, taking a fresh angle on familiar themes of love and death, and manifesting greater insight in its musings about living and loss during the traumatic years of the AIDS epidemic. (May)Forecast: Picano's latest should only enhance his reputation as a major chronicler of gay life and culture, continuing his successful track record of 18 books, among them several bestsellers. The release of Onyx as a hardcover, backed by a national author tour, vouches for Alyson's faith in Picano's clout as a popular cultural icon.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Alyson Books; 1st edition (May 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555836402
• ISBN-13: 978-1555836405
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,226,287 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Onyx is a Jewel, August 10, 2001

By 

Gremulak (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Onyx (Hardcover)

Felice Picano's work ranges so differently from book to book, so I was curious to see why he said in a reading event that it was "a difficult book" for him to write. While AIDS novels may have become passe, this one isn't just that, but covers the ground of painful hospital scenes, and how it and other tragedies disintegrate a happy extended family. While the mother-in-law character embodies all that is evil in homophobia, and some may consider her a stereotype, I found her all too realistic for the era. The love affair between Ray and studly "straight" Mike is both erotic and touching, capturing the embodiment of the type of men that fill New York and cause quite a distraction for gay guys. Picano dispenses with some of the cleverness of his earlier work, and has written a touching saga of love and loss. It's also a bit of a love note to New York, and perhaps a reflection of his own move from NYC to Los Angeles. With all the music references (the narrator Ray runs a classical music publishing company), it's too bad there isn't an accompanying soundtrack!

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Poetically Dreary, February 22, 2002

By 

Timothy M Forry (White Plains, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Onyx (Hardcover)

Onyx was my first encounter with the work of Felice Picano. I can't say that I am totally displeased with what I found.

Picano's use of lanugage is astonishing, beautiful and most of the time, flows like poetry. Unfortunately, the story that is told is uneven and loses focus.

It is extraordinarily difficult to tell a story from different perspectives and keep a reader's interest. This seemed to be major error for Onyx.

Overall, the book would have been much stronger had it kept its lens focused on Ray, who is a likeably flawed character. His journey through the various manifestations of love rings true, but the story tended to veer away from this course too often, as if the author was afraid of what he might find.

While the story of Jesse, Rays lover who is fading from life, is told with compassion and grace, it would have served a much better purpose in a separate work.

I admire Picano's effort with this book and will definitely read his past writing, but I wish I would have started with his earlier work, which I am told is much stronger.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Polished to a gleam!, June 3, 2001

By 

Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Onyx (Hardcover)

ONYX is an amazingly fine novel from a writer who seems to grow with each published work. Though many may overlook this latest book as merely another Violet Quill opus chronicling gay life, this book is more than a solid story, more than a beautifully written novel, more than many other books in this genre. This novel is an elegantly written exploration of the quest of the individual in the 21st Century - the immediacy and inexplicable choices that death makes, how individuals deal with genetic agar plates peppered by the vagaries of childhood environments/family history/social mores/chance encounters, why we become puppets of our stage play of id/ego/superego. Picano has created thoroughly 3-dimensional characters who leap off the page as both good and bad acquaintances we've all encountered. There seems to be much autobiographical material here: how else could the author know the complexities of his characters unless he'd lived in their skins of mixed in ther minds!

ONYX, the title, refers to a life long thwarted desire for an unobtainable object (an onyx ring) that becomes available only after Charon guides the main character across the river Styx. Love, relationships, family, finding physical solace in a surrogate sexual fling, the vileness of AIDS and the accompanying tragedies encountered at the demise of a loved one whose family has never accepted the life of the victim, the true meaning of friendship, the equal vileness of cancer, of vehicular deaths, of family hate gone wild - all are components of this book. There are surprising elements that inform us of practices unknown to most of us (were you aware that you could watch a cremation with all its gothic elements?), as well as pages of simply lyrical prose becoming poetry. Picano knows how to create atmosphere, how to lead us through the complexities of nature's erratic moves, and most of all he knows how to keep our attention focused in reading a book that becomes addictive.

For those who have not had the pleasure of reading Picano, jump in and ready yourself for a ride you'll not forget. From another artistic viewpoint this book design, cover, printing choices, page layout are the work of an extraordinary craftsman. This reader finds ONYX to be his finest novel to date.....and waiting for what is next!