At times depressing, this is a novel about loneliness and how it can completely invade our lives if we allow it to do so, and how growing old can make it even worse. Also about "tapes" and how we run them in our lives and how they can run us... ( )

Samuel R Delaney does mainstream fiction. I'm afraid to say anything about this book because whatever I say might make it sound boring, which it profoundly isn't. So ignore this review and just go read it for yourself.

Still reading? OK, then. The protagonist is a shy, black, gay poet who reminisces about his youth and navigates aging in a world he is keenly observant of and emotionally distant from. The novel is compassionate, tragic, heroic, ordinary, chastely erotic, wickedly funny, vividly descriptive, playfully serious, intellectual, historical. His memories are twined non-chronologically with observations and opinions about poetry, black history, gay history, small press publishing, poverty, New York City, and more. ( )

I've been a fan of Delany's work for at least 30 years, a great admirer of his courage and imagination, and his dense, poetic writing style. His latest novel is not his usual science fiction or fantasy, but the spare, almost painfully realistic story of a black poet who bears many similarities to Delany himself. It was not always a pleasant or easy read, but it was beautiful and affecting. ( )