The Prettiest Star

January 6, 2020
A man dying of AIDS returns home to Chester, Ohio, from 1986 New York City in this heartfelt novel from Sickels (The Evening Hour). Brian, a documentary filmmaker whose boyfriend recently died, leaves behind the “ghosts” of the West Village for Chester, “to be seen, to be accepted, and to be loved.” As paranoia and fear around the AIDS epidemic escalates, Brian’s family finds themselves the targets of malicious gossip and ostracizing, and Brian’s presence changes how his sister, Jess; mother, Sharon; father, Travis; and grandmother Lettie relate to each other and to their friends and neighbors. Brian gains additional support from Annie, his best friend from New York and a very out lesbian, who flies to Chester to help brace him from the homophobic taunts endured by him and his family as he documents his experience on video. After Brian feels he’s bringing too much trouble to his family, he moves in with a new friend, who eventually invites Brian’s grandmother, Lettie, to come and care for him after his condition worsens. Sickels is at his best in his characters’ most painful moments, poignantly revealing Lettie’s regret of offering Brian too little, too late. This tragic story of AIDS and violent homophobia stands out by showing the transcendent power of queer communities to make their voices endure through art. Agent: PJ Mark, Janklow & Nesbit Associates.

April 1, 2020

In Sickels's second novel (after The Evening Hour), Brian Jackson returns to his traditional Ohio home in 1986 to battle AIDS. Once townsfolk discover why Brian is back, the taunts begin; Brian's little sister, Jess, is shunned at school; and people who were once thought of as friends become distant. A scene at the local swimming pool clearly illuminating the community's ignorance regarding AIDS is harrowing. Brian's family reacts to his illness with denial, misunderstanding, and shame, though Brian's mother, Sharon, begins to look at things in a different light. The story is told in alternating chapters by Brian, Sharon, and Jess, but unfortunately all three voices are strikingly similar, and at times Sickels explains the characters' motivations and feelings rather than letting the characters speak for themselves. In addition, the community is portrayed as universally intolerant, and while it's true that the disease was hard to fathom, this depiction seems to distill the gay and straight characters to a simplistic dichotomy of good and bad. VERDICT A touching, sad, and important book, but sturdier editing would have helped to take it to another level. Libraries with large LGBTQ collections will want, but novels such as Rebecca Makkai's The Great Believers and Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty delve into the subject with more success.--Stephen Schmidt, Greenwich Lib., CT

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2020
Sickels' (The Evening Hour, 2012) heart-wrenching novel shows how the 1980s AIDS crisis affects one young man and his family. Hailing from small-town Ohio, Brian dreams of making art and getting the hell out of there. His hometown, where kids play "smear the queer" and the pastor preaches the sins of homosexuality, is no place to come out. But after six years in New York, and the deaths of many of his friends and his boyfriend, he returns home diagnosed HIV-positive. His parents, Sharon and Travis, wash his dinnerware and clothes separately and refuse to tell anyone, including his younger sister, Jess. Brian's grandmother, one of the only people to treat him normally, still believes he is going to get better. As small-town news travels, Brian is vilified, accused of trying to spread AIDS, refused dentist and doctor visits, and shunned, and it tears apart his once close-knit family. The alternating narrators of Brian, Sharon, and Jess are fleshed out in all of their complexities and contradictions. This immersive, tragic book will stay with readers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

Starred review from February 1, 2020
A young man dying of AIDS returns to his Ohio hometown, where people think homosexuality is a sin and the disease is divine punishment. Brian left Chester when he was 18, seeking freedom to be who he was in New York City. Now, in 1986, he's 24, his partner and virtually all of their friends are dead, and he's moving into the disease's late stages. "He turned his back on his family to live a life of sin and he's sick because of it," thinks his mother, Sharon; nonetheless she says yes when Brian asks if he can come home after years of estrangement. His father, Travis, insists they must keep Brian's illness and sexuality a secret; he makes Sharon set aside tableware and bedclothes exclusively for their son and wash them separately wearing gloves. Sickels (The Evening Hour, 2012) doesn't gloss over the shame Brian's family feels nor the astonishing cruelty of their friends and neighbors when word gets out. Brian's ejection from the local swimming pool is the first in a series of increasingly ugly incidents: vicious phone calls, hate mail to the local newspapers, graffiti on the family garage, a gunshot through the windshield of his father's car. Grandmother Lettie is Brian's only open defender, refusing to speak to friends who ostracize him and boycotting the diner that denied him service. Younger sister Jess, taunted at school, wishes he'd never come home and tells him so. This unvarnished portrait of what people are capable of when gripped by ignorance and fear is relieved slightly by a few cracks in the facade of the town's intolerance, some moments of kindness or at least faint regret as Brian's health worsens over the summer and fall. Sharon and Travis both eventually acknowledge they have failed their son; she makes some amends while he can only grieve. Sickels' characters are painfully flawed and wholly, believably human in their failings. This unflinching honesty, conveyed in finely crafted prose, makes for a memorable and unsettling novel. Powerfully affecting and disturbing.

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