In the Spotligh: Jim Grimsley

[reviews_and_ramblings]

The Book: Young. Handsome. Rich. Doctor. Quite a dream boy, Ford McKinney is the perfect catch. Ford's family wants him home for the holidays. They have picked out a girl for him to marry. But Ford has news, too: he's fallen for an administrator at the hospital, a man by the name of Dan Crell.

To complicate things further, Dan and Ford come from opposite sides of the tracks. Dan's mother lives in a trailer at the edge of a cemetery where she is the caretaker; Ford's family lives in the best house on the best street of Savannah. Dan's mother knows her son well, knows that he will never marry, and she just wants to see him happy, and loved. To Ford even the idea of telling his family about his relationship seems impossible. Sometimes he can't believe it himself. And wouldn't you know it's Christmas when these two families reveal their true natures.

Comfort & Joy proves what we all suspect: going home for the holidays is never easy, whether you go alone or decide to bring a date--especially if that date is your gay lover. Grimsley triumphs in his new novel in which two unlikely lovers must reconcile what is expected of them with what they know in their hearts is right.

My Review: http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/260940.html

Amazon: Comfort and Joy

Other Books in the List:

Kirith Kirin (2000)
Amazon: Kirith Kirin

Boulevard (2002)
Amazon: Boulevard 

The Author: Born in 1955 to a troubled rural family in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, Grimsley said of his childhood that "for us in the South, the family is a field where craziness grows like weeds".

He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and then moved to Atlanta where he would spend nearly twenty years as a secretary at Atlanta's Grady Memorial Hospital before joining the creative-writing faculty at Emory University. During those years, Grimsley wrote prolifically, with fourteen of his plays produced between 1983 and 1993.

Jim's first novel Winter Birds was published by Algonquin Books in the United States in 1994. The novel won the 1995 Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction, given by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Prix Charles Brisset, given by the French Academy of Physicians. The novel also received a special citation from the Ernest Hemingway Foundation as one of three finalists for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Jim's second novel, Dream Boy, was published by Algonquin in September, 1995, and won the 1996 Award for Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Literature from the American Library Association; the novel was also one of five finalists for the Lambda Literary Award. Dream Boy was adapted for the stage by Eric Rosen, the play premiering at About Face Theatre in Chicago in 1996. Jim’s third novel, My Drowning, was published in 1997 and for this book Jim was named Georgia Author of the Year. His fourth novel, Comfort & Joy was a Lambda Literary Award finalist, and his fifth novel, Boulevard, was published in April, 2002; for this novel he was named Georgia Author of the Year for the second time.

Jim has written eleven full-length and four one-act plays, including Mr. Universe, The Lizard of Tarsus, White People and The Existentialists. A collection of his plays, Mr. Universe and Other Plays, was published by Algonquin in 1998, and was a Lambda Literary Award finalist in drama. He has been playwright-in-residence at 7Stages Theatre of Atlanta since 1986 and was playwright in residence at About Face Theatre of Chicago from 2000-2004. In 1988 he was awarded the George Oppenheimer Award for Best New American Playwright for his play Mr. Universe. He was also awarded the first-ever Bryan Prize for Drama, presented by the Fellowship of Southern Writers for distinguished achievement in playwriting,in 1993.

He was a 1997 winner of the Lila Wallace/Reader’s Digest Writers Award. His first fantasy novel, Kirith Kirin, was published by Meisha Merlin Press in June, 2000 and won the Lambda Literary Award in the Science Fiction/Horror category. He has since published two subsequent science fiction novels set in the same universe, The Ordinary and The Last Green Tree, both with Tor Books of NY. The Ordinary was awarded a Lammy in 2005. His short fiction has been anthologized in The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Sixteenth and Nineteenth Annual Collections, edited by Gardner Dozois, in Best New Stories from the South, 2001 edition, edited by Shannon Ravenel, and in other anthologies. He is a member of PEN, Dramatists Guild, Alternate ROOTS, and the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America. He has twice been a finalist for the Rome Prize in Literature. In 2005, he won an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for his work as a playwright and novelist. In 2006 he, along with Dorothy Allison, was one of the inaugural winners of the Mid-Career Author’s Award from the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival. (From Wikipedia)

http://web.mac.com/grimjim/Jim_Grimsley/Welcome_to_Grimjim.html

Top 100 Gay Novels List (*)

External Link to the Top 100 Gay Novels List (simple - without photos)

External Link to the Top 100 Gay Novels List (wanted - with photos)

*only one title per author, only print books released after January 1, 2000.

Other titles not in the top 100 list:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/top50MM

Comments

[snowmore.livejournal.com]

"Comfort & Joy" is one of my favourite books, of any writing genre. I hope it will find more readers from your review here.

I also read "Dream Boy", which is a wonderful read, but does not have a happy ending.

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

I liked very much Comfort & Joy, it's a bit sad but very tender and also "peaceful". I have to problem to highly reccomend it to everyone.

Elisa

[snowmore.livejournal.com]

"peaceful" is a very good word for this story.

I want to read it again, but just received in the mail this morning the new Paullina Simons (I must tell you of her "The Bronze Horseman" someday if you don't know that novel), Ally Blue's "Willow Bend", "Icarus in Flight" and "Call Me By Your Name".

I don't want to go to work!! I want to stay home and read. :)

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

I know Paullina Simmons and also read the Bronze Horseman. And have and love Willow Bend. Alos read Icarus in Fligh. Still to read Call Me By Your Name. Elisa

[snowmore.livejournal.com]

I purchased Icarus in Flight because of your review. Robin

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

Oh! Hope you will like it. Elisa