Dancing on the Moon

In the title story from Dancing on the Moon a young man, thinking of all his friends who have died from AIDS and those who are ill, says: "No one out there has a clue as to what our lives are like. All this is as strange to them as dancing on the moon." The speaker marveling at the gulf that separates those affected by AIDS from a world that thinks itself immune is just one of the memorable characters in this unprecedented book of twelve virtuoso stories about the impact. of AIDS, particularly as it has reverberated through the lives of gay men. With profound literary courage, Jameson Currier documents what those lives are like. With sure-handed narrative skill, Chekhovian compassion, and remarkable grace, Currier writes not only about those who are living with AIDS and those who have died from it but also about the friends, families, and lovers who nurse and care for the sick and remember them afterward. His characters range from. rebellious Southern teenagers to an elderly Jewish woman whose grandson has died, to an infant with AIDS adopted by an AIDS widower and his new lover. "What They Carried" concerns the things friends bring and give to another friend over the course of his struggle with the disease. "Reunions" finds two men sharing a bizarre cab ride in the last days of their illnesses. In "The Absolute Worst" a woman reunites two former lovers from her college years. A woman submerges. herself in the new life of her dead brother's lover in order to come to terms with her own losses in "Weekends." In "Ghosts" a man seeks out a dying acquaintance in an unconscious attempt to justify his own lover's suicide. In all the stories men and women search for order and reason during a health crisis that knows no rationale. With both humor and pathos, tragedy and hope, Jameson Currier writes about life as it is lived today. Without being maudlin, sentimental, or. hysterical, he shows that even the horror of AIDS can be meaningful, poignant, and instructive to the human condition. No fiction could be more pertinent to these parlous times, for Dancing on the Moon is truth-telling at its most important. It speaks eloquently to its author's abundant gifts even as it bears witness to an era in our collective history. Jameson Currier's collection may be shaped by the devastation of a virus so unknown and feared and misunderstood that. it is as strange to many people as "dancing on the moon," yet no one who reads it will be left untouched.