Brian Malloy

Acclaimed author Brian Malloy brings insight, humor, and the authenticity of his own experiences as a member of the AIDS generation to this universal story of love and loss set in New York City and Minneapolis at the peak of the AIDS crisis. Published on the 40th anniversary of the disease's first reported cases, After Francesco is both a tribute to a generation lost to the pandemic as well as a powerful exploration of heartbreak, recovery and how love can defy grief. The year is 1988 and 28-year-old Kevin Doyle is bone-tired of attending funerals. It's been two years since his partner Francesco died from AIDS, an epidemic ravaging New York City and going largely ignored by a government that expects those affected to suffer in silence, thrusting unjustifiable shame and guilt on top of their loss. Some people might insist that Francesco and the other friends he's lost to the disease are in a better place now, but Kevin definitely isn't. Half-alive, he spends his days in a mind-numbing job and nights with the ghost of Francesco, drunk and full of memories of the life of a man who was too young to die. When Kevin hits an all-time low, he realizes it's time to move back home to Minnesota and figure out how to start living again--without Francesco. With the help of a surviving partners support group and old and new friends, Kevin slowly starts to do just that. But an unthinkable family betrayal, and the news that his best friend is fighting for his life in New York, will force a reckoning and a defining choice.

Brian Malloy's acclaimed debut novel set in Minneapolis in the late 70's, The Year of Ice is the story of a painfully revealing year that threatens to shatter the tenuous bonds between a father and his teenage sonIt is 1978 in the Twin Cities, and Kevin Doyle, a high school senior, is a marginal student in love with keggers, rock and roll, and--unbeknownst to anyone else--a boy in his class with thick eyelashes and a bad attitude. His mother Eileen died two years earlier when her car plunged into the icy waters of the Mississippi River, and since then Kevin's relationship with his father Patrick has become increasingly distant. As lonely women vie for his father's attention, Kevin discovers Patrick's own closely guarded secret: he had planned to abandon his family for another woman. More disturbingly, his mother's death may well have been a suicide, not an accident.Complicating the family dynamic is the constant meddling of Kevin's outspoken Aunt Nora--who will never forgive Patrick for Eileen's death--along with Patrick's inability to stay single for very long. His loyalties divided between his father and his aunt, between his internal reality and his public persona, Kevin is forced to accept his gay identity and reevaluate his notions of family and love as painful truths emerge about both.

Who is Brendan Wolf? It all depends on who you ask. * To the staff of a Minneapolis nursing home, he's the devoted partner of a much older man who's recently suffered a debilitating stroke. * To the women of a conservative, Christian pro-life organization, he's the tireless volunteer grieving over the recent loss of his wife and their unborn child. * To one gay activist, he's the unaffectedly charming, yet directionless and unemployed man that he's fallen hopelessly in love with * To his brother and his brother's wife, he's the lynchpin of a scam that will net them enough money to start their lives over somewhere new. * To the general public, he's an armed and dangerous fugitive All of these people - and yet none of them - Brendan Wolf is an ambivalent lover, reluctant conspirator, counterfeit Christian, and, most of all, an unemployed daydreamer obsessed with a dead man. From the author of the award-winning The Year of Ice, this is a tour-de-force - a compelling, hilarious, heart-breaking novel about one utterly typical, and completely original, figure: Brendan Wolf."Malloy masterfully blends the page turning plot and brooding atmosphere of neo-noir with an affecting sensitivity to the struggle for human connection." - OUT"Malloy's prose has a meticulous sheen that bears comparison to such careful crafters as David Leavitt and Mary Gaitskill." - Lambda Book Report"A superb work of a wonderful writer." - Charles Baxter, author of The Feast of Love."BRENDAN WOLF manages to be both hilarious and desperate, a book that is as complicated as its wily, winning protagonist. Brian Malloy has created an amazing character in Brendan, an ordinary man doing his best to keep hoping for better. I read BRENDAN WOLF in two days, and now I'm going to go read it again." - Amanda Eyre Ward, author of Sleep Toward HeavenTwisted, strange, awesome and wise, BRENDAN WOLF redeemed my faith that a literary book could be exciting for its content as well as its words. This is a gritty, real, unbelievably bold novel that will break your heart and leave you haunted by its entirely original characters." - Lisa Tucker, author of The Song Reader."Unflinchingly smart, surprising and shattering both, and written in prose as clean and clear as a mountain stream, BRENDAN WOLF is nothing short of brilliant." - Caroline Leavitt, author of Coming Back to Me and Girls in Trouble