Word: hectored
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Hector's character is as funny a modern storyteller as anyone else out there, but despite the comic, light tone of his observation of the disease (thereby seeming to achieve some sort of detachment from the particularly unfunny topic he is addressing), his humor cannot disengage him from his death. It will come whether he is funny...
...Hector has two years to live; his friends the Deds are about to lose their marriage. As Hector begins his story, he asks us to forgive him if we've hard it before. And surely we have heard stories of the disease creeping in, at first slowly but soon faster and faster, at first unassuming but soon dominating and disfiguring. Too, we have heard of happy marriages breaking apart...
Susan Ded is Hector's best friend, a college friend who calls him "darling" and has strong opinions, though love's treatment of her has made her opinions "less vivid." The story belonging to the Deds and the story belonging to Hector move along at roughly the same speed, and as Bill Ded hires prostitutes to call him dirty names, Hector loses weight; as Susan moves toward alcoholism, Hector is hospitalized...
...Death arrives like a pig in a blanket, like a carrot in a pot," says Hector, "salted, salted." Which might make you think that he's not taking the experience very seriously. He is not, however, without fear or selfpity. What makes his experience visible to the reader is that he does not demonstrate his lack of denial, as he says, by non-stop screaming. AIDS leaves him quite clearly a human being, as it does in fact to all of those who contract it, and because we have not known Hector previously, the story is new, we have...
What makes Mr. Kondoleon's novel the success that it is his ability to reveal Hector to us, even though Hector is in the process of losing himself. Any points Mr. Kondoleon has to make about 'life in the age of AIDS," as book jackets and television shows like to call the time we live in are gently submerged within Hector's character. The comedy of the novel is gently submerged as well within its obvious tragedy, but the submersion is so delicate that the tragedy at times seems to fade. But while Hector does manage to transform "peace...