ancientreader's Reviews > Two Natures

Six stars, at minimum.

I felt obliged to read this because I'd picked up an ARC of Reiter's Origin Story without realizing that it was a sequel, so I can't really take the time to review in depth. [ETA: Oops.] However.

I've lived in NYC since 1980 and I'm queer. So I'm here to say that Two Natures slammed me back hard into a time I had almost managed to -- not forget, okay, but put behind me: the time of young emaciated purple-spotted men in wheelchairs. The metallic smell of pentamidine. (Pneumocystis pneumonia treatment.) The obituaries. The obituaries. The obituaries.

This is something like a bildungsroman, in that Julian Selkirk, narrator and protagonist, has just started college at the beginning and by the end is a twenty-five-year-old AIDS widower tentatively beginning a long-delayed relationship with his dead partner's best friend. Normally I'd put that under a spoiler tag, but I really don't think suspense about the plot matters here: the point is the evocation of that time and place and the depth and complexity of the characters making their way through it, or brought by bad luck and/or self-destructiveness to not make their way through.

As it happens, not only was I living in NYC during the early and mid 1990s, when Two Natures is set, I spent several years living in the same neighborhood as Julian, which puts me in a position to say that Reiter's evocation of the time is very nearly perfect. If the author ever does re-edit and republish, though, I offer a suggestion: double-check those Starbucks coffees, because I'm pretty sure Starbucks wasn't a thing in the city yet.

More unpleasantly jarring were a few casual instances of drive-by fatphobia, misogyny, and transphobia. I'm of two minds about these, because they're appropriate to Julian's character, especially given his social and professional situation -- he's not always the nicest person in the world, and he's a fashion photographer; plus, the attitudes he expresses were pretty much SOP at the time, especially among white cis gay men. I could have done without, even back then. But. Julian is so real, and part of what makes him so fascinating is the gulf that emerges between his occasional nastiness and his behavior, most especially the tender care he and Phil's friend Peter take of Phil during his illness. Perhaps all I want to say is that readers should expect to love and grieve with someone they also, not infrequently, will want to slap. Also, you may have to step away repeatedly and read some fluff -- Two Natures is just that painful.

In closing: it's beyond me why I'm about to post only the twenty-first GR review of a book that ought to be famous.