Book 869: The Guncle – Steven Rowley

I had to wait a few weeks for this book to come in at the library, but when it did I immediately slotted it into my upcoming books to read. I did this not so much out of an OMG I have to read this but more out of an OMG I need to read this before it goes back to the library because the wait list exploded and I’d never get it back again!

The book is a lot more serious than the cover and the characters really make you think it is. It covers death and grief and growing from both of those things at different ages and life stages. It talks about substance abuse and  sibling rivalries. And it highlights dysfunctional adult sibling relationships. Rowley really did a great job of bringing humor and lightness to some really serious topics.

To be completely honest, I was not a fan of the writing when I first picked up the book. A lot of it had to do with the protagonist Patrick, a reclusive former TV star who hasn’t gotten over the death of his partner, Joe, and how Joe’s family cut him out completely from everything after he died, and how he talked to everyone. He just really irked me and got under my skin. He’s called home because his sister-in-law who happens to be his bestfriend from college has died from the cancer she’d been fighting. When he arrives his brother confesses that he’s addicted to pills and wants Patrick to take his niece and nephew for the 90 days he’s in treatment.

“Guncle Rule number eight: Live your life to the fullest every single day, because every day is a gift. That’s why people die. To teach us the importance of living.” (100)

The book progresses from there and after Grant and Maisie join Patrick in Palm Springs the writing (and really just Patrick’s character) get a lot better. There was so much humor in how the kids address Patrick as Gay Uncle Patrick (GUP) and how he talks to them as if they’re adults with the exact same pop-culture knowledge as he has. Like there were legit moments when I chuckled to myself because it was just so ridiculous you had to laugh.

We find out toward the end of the novel that Sara, his deceased best friend and sister-in-law, orchestrated the whole summer because she knew Patrick was still grieving over Joe and that in helping Maisie and Grant deal with the grief of losing her, they’d help him deal with the grief of losing Joe. And they really do help each other.

Grief orbits the heart. Some days the circle is greater. Those are the good days. You have room to move and dance and breathe. Some days the circle is tighter. Those are the hard ones. (295)

There are so many poignant scenes where they talk about grief or try to talk about grief and they all get confused or angry or upset, but they keep trying and the scene when Patrick realizes that he’s being pulled out of his grief and reclusiveness to care for and love his niece and nephew he panics and goes to Greg, his brother, and says he can’t do it anymore and Greg says basically he has to they’re all healing.

The other powerful parts of the novel are when Patrick is talking to his various family members, usually his nephew Grant or sister Carla, about his experience of being gay. Sometimes it’s hilarious like this interaction with Grant:

‘Why do you like boys?’ Grant asked sourly, but with slightly more boredom than judgment.
‘I don’t know, why do you like pizza?’
‘Because it tastes good in my mouth.’
Patrick wasn’t about to go anywhere near that.
‘Not everyone thinks that. Some people don’t like pizza. To them it does not taste good.’
‘Why?’ Grant asked.
‘Why does it taste good to you?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘So you just like it, then,’ Patrick explained.
‘Yeah!’
‘Sometimes it’s hard to articulate why we like something. We just do. We’re programmed that way.’
‘Do you want me to like boys?’ Grant asked.
‘I don’t want you to like anything.’ Patrick slunk in his chair as a woman walked by dragging two kids of her own. She glanced over at Patrick in solidarity. ‘Let me rephrase that. I want you to like whatever it is you like.’
‘I like boys.’
‘Congratulations.’
‘As friends,’ Grant clarified.
‘Bravo. As you should. Boys can make excellent friends. And if anything changes, you’ll know as you get older. Grantelope.’ (187)

And sometimes it’s more defensive and protective, most often when he’s talking to his older sister Carla and he’s trying to explain or find out why he comes across the way he does.

What do you think gay people do? Have done for generations? We adopt a safe version of ourselves for the public, for protection, and then as adults we excavate our true selves from the parts we’ve invented to protect us. It’s the most important work of queer lives. (201)

There was a little romantic subplot from the midpoint and I am SO glad that Rowley decided to keep it light. He kept the focus on the grieving and Patrick’s relationship with his niece and nephew and the few flashbacks with their mother. In doing so, he made it more authentic and didn’t rip Patrick out of the moment or his grief and allowed for such a sweet final chapter when Patrick’s siblings, his niblings (what he calls his niece and nephew) and his boyfriend are all there as he makes his return to the limelight on stage in Connecticut with a potential new TV lined up in the near future.

Recommendation: This was an adorable read that covered a lot of heavy topics. I honestly didn’t expect to laugh as much as I did with knowing that grief and substance abuse and loss of a parent were subjects covered. It took quite a while for me to get into the book because the protagonist, Patrick, really grated on my nerves, but like any good character he grows and changes throughout the novel making it that much more worthwhile to get to the end.

Opening Line: “All right, here goes nothing.”

Closing Line: “And that’s how you do it.” (Whited out to avoid spoilers, highlight to read.)

Additional Quotes from The Guncle
“‘You’re forty-three!’ Maisie bellowed.
‘Who are you, the DMV? Lower your voice.’
‘That’s almost fifty!’ Grant’s eyes grew big. Patrick took the jab, then closed his eyes and bit his lower lip; the observation was just shy of a hate crime. Do not punch a child, do not punch a child. ‘Can we please focus?'” (27)

“It would have amused him, sharing old stories. The time he took her to the Ramrod, a Boston leather bar, and people mistook her for a drag queen. The time they were arrested for sneaking into the Granary Burying Ground after dark to make rubbings of the gravestones. The time she screamed obscenities in the face of religious protesters the first time they attended Pride. He came close to pulling the second eulogy out of his jacket pocket. But in the end it was for his Sara, not theirs, so he left it in his breast pocket, where it sat directly over his heart.” (35)

“Patrick thought his coming out would restore their relationship; if the problem was straight white male privilege, he no longer identified with the trifecta and now had his own history of oppression. Yet somehow she took his lack of attraction to women as yet another affront to the sex.” (38)

“Guncle Rule number five: If a gay man hands you his phone, look only at what he’s showing you. If it’s a photo, don’t swipe. And for god’s sake, don’t open any unfamiliar apps.” (52)

“‘On her wedding day. She looked radiant. You know she and your dad fought over who I would stand up for? Should I be the best man? The maid of honor?’
‘That’s a girl job.’
‘Maid of honor? No, it’s not. What do we say in this house? Boys can do girl things and girls can do boy things. That’s not even a Guncle Rule, there shouldn’t even be boy things and girl things to begin with. People should just do what they want.'” (98)

“People who love each other fight. The opposite of love isn’t anger. It’s indifference. When people stop fighting, that’s when you should be worried.” (179)

“Books should be an experience, he thought, not a trophy for having read them.” (222)

“My life will be different. For a bright, shining moment I was part of a team. I thought we would see the future together and be—oh god, writing it like this sounds so maudlin—A FAMILY. Now I don’t know. I don’t even know what family means. I’m adrift in black space like an untethered astronaut, each star I float past a shining memory reminding me that I don’t live that life anymore.” (227)

“He would always come back to the same thing: stargazing was time traveling. He’d looked it all up, read every book in the library. We see the sun as it was 8.3 minutes ago. Alpha Centauri—the next closest star—was 4.3 light-years away. When he looked at Alpha Centauri, he saw light that was generated when Joe was still alive. He even remembered the time, 4.3 years and a day after that fateful night, when he looked up at the sky to see the first light generated after Joe had died; he wept like a child. The North Star? Three hundred and twenty light-years. Its light was generated long before either he or Joe existed. It was a sucker’s game, he repeated, this time to himself. How can you tell where you’re going when you’re always looking up at the past?” (238)

“I need you to remember something. We’ll call it Guncle Rule sweet sixteen: I want you to really live. To live is the rarest of things. Most people merely exist.” (300)