From the author of the highly acclaimed In the Drink, a smart and sexy exploration of New York and its customs through the eyes of a disillusioned, yet secretly hopeful, gay man.

Jeremy Thrane is a thirty-five-year-old writer in love with a married man. For years, Jeremy has posed as "archivist" to Ted Masterson, a Hollywood action star. Jeremy maintains Ted's New York brownstone and guards the secret that could destroy his career. But when Ted and his movie-star wife, Giselle, adopt a child and become America's most-photographed family, Jeremy finds himself without a job and, more importantly, bereft of the love of his life.

With the same wit and authenticity that have made her a critical and popular favorite, Kate Christensen chronicles Jeremy's search for a new start as he ventures to every corner of the New York landscape, from watering holes where gossip columnists await an "item" to dives where waiters and busboys are eager to please patrons–especially after their shifts are over. In his spare time, he struggles to finish a novel based on his father's peripatetic life as a fanatical Marxist and turns out sizzling pornography for a one-man enterprise run by an old high school acquaintance. His sister, an up-and-coming rock musician, and his thrice-married, former flower-child mother, who found her true calling as a poet late in life, provide the mixture of criticism and compassion Jeremy has known all his life and now, for the most unexpected reasons, finally learns to appreciate.

A fast-paced and funny social satire, Jeremy Thrane deftly captures the slippery chameleon quality of American identity, the power of youth and beauty, and the complexity of love.


From the Hardcover edition.