The Hurry-up Song

Book excerpt: Out of love, anger, and grief Clifford Chase has crafted a moving and brilliant memoir of loss and family bonds. With startling honesty, he evokes scenes of life in a suburban American family and illuminates the strong ties that are woven between two gay brothers as they become adults. Chase documents how, in turn, the family dynamics change forever when one brother--the elder, the admired, the feared, the loved--weathers AIDS-related illnesses and ultimately dies. This is a searching, unsentimental account of how AIDS steals away loved ones and how the wounds of loss come to be healed.