5 stars for the molly parts and how much it made me miss the city :' ( )

One star for symapthy in regards to plagiarism, and half a star otherwise. This will be a long review. I took a lot of notes and have strong opinions.
I was so excited when I saw this was available as an ebook at my library. I'd wanted to read it since I found out Jonathan Larsen, the playwright of the musical "Rent," plagiarized it. I'm so glad the official goodreads summary reflected it too. It wound up in court, even. I gave an extra star for sympathy to Shulman. Jonathan Larsen died of cancer, not AIDS as is popularly believed. The originating Broadway cast did a sing-through at his funeral as a sign of respect; it had nothing to do with AIDS. He's not immune to my criticism and neither is Shulman. Lindsay Ellis, a brilliant youtube film critic, did a terrific video essay on "Rent" that I agree with heartily.

I say the following as a queer person with six years semiprofessional musical theatre experience as a teen and seven years (and counting) as a professional as per Seattle standards; who received required dramaturgy training (long story): "Rent" mocks the AIDS crisis. This book, supposedly all about it, doesn't mention it until chapter ten. Kate, one of the protagonists, doesn't go to an ACT UP meeting until chapter twenty-six and she's uncomfortable the entire time. A rent strike is mentioned for a few pages, but not until over a hundred pages into the book. The bulk of this book is about a love triangle and all the sex that takes place. This book describes everything except the sex so blandly and without emotion, and ACT UP is an afterthought. That's how much sex as part of a love triangle is in this. Not a fan at ALL. Everything I just described is...why I have a probably unpopular opinion of the plagiarism suit, but I will get there.

I mentioned my required dramaturgy training, which I will now briefly touch on. It was required by the semiprofessional youth theatre company I acted with from age twelve to when I aged out at eighteen. We had to research the historical times and societal messages our shows were set in, and some psychology to understand our characters, among other things. Adults in the company helped us a lot, and it set a good foundation. Given that I went to American public school from the 90s to the early 2000s, I didn't learn at all about the AIDS crisis until I was twenty-two and in college. American sex ed is abysmal until you get to college. I've continued since I was twenty-two to learn things from time to time for different reasons. "Rent" is not a good representation of the AIDS crisis in the late 80s, but this book is absolutely hideous at it.

Unless you know about ACT UP and what and how they did, you will have no clue what goes on in this book beyond a casually homophobic and racist straight white dude whose wife is cheating on him with an out lesbian. This is a period piece from the POV of straight people--cheating on your spouse with the same gender doesn't necessarily make you non-heterosexual but that's a discussion for a different time. Straight people would have overwhelmingly and definitely reacted to ACT UP the way Peter and Kate did. They certainly wouldn't have named or explained the group.

Shulman is out and was involved in ACT UP. She's still involved in AIDS activism. "How to Survive A Plague" is an excellent documentary examining ACT UP's history and the AIDS crisis. It needs to be shown in high school science and health classes, rather than "Philadelphia," which kind of touches on it, and another whose title I can't remember. When I was twenty-two, I had the wonderful opportunity to take a Queer Studies class taught by an out professor. Someone said something about American public school in the 90s and early 2000s, and all of us nodded. She stared at us, stunned. "You guys think AIDS was a disease of the 90s and that it just stayed there. It didn't. I'm spending a week teaching you the reality, starting now." It was a huge part of Queer history, and we needed to learn it. Everyone, including the six straight students, hung wide-eyed onto her every word and lesson about the crisis, from 1981 to modern-day and how it's gotten into the straight community too.

Shulman's book doesn't even come close. The book has no real plot beyond the cheating wife, and the homophobia and racism of her husband. The descriptions in this novel and its style of writing, as the Das_sporking community would say, are backstroking in urple. Soaked and submerged in every hue of purple, from lilac to violet to plum to magenta to a purple so dark, it's nearly black, What an insufferable pain in the ass reading experience. And I think I know why Shulman did it.

The POV is from two straight people and one out lesbian. The straights get dis-proportionally the most time in the novel. Shulman likely wrote this for straight people, from the imagined POV of straight people, in order to try to get them to sympathize with what was going on. I get it. I think that was a noble idea and this was a horrid attempt. I'm not sure how it aged, even. Medicine and society have made a lot of advances since the 80s, and ACT UP is an enormous contributing factor. Several times in the novel, often when Kate and Molly are slobbering all over each other, Kate remarks Molly hates men. SCHULMAN, YOU KNOW BETTER. Yes, this attitude is still pervasive today among straight woman. That doesn't mean it needed to be reinforced by a lesbian author who was trying to humanize people with AIDS! That noted, this repeated choice of Shulman reinforces my hypothesis on -why- Shulman chose to write this for straight people.

Molly cracks a joke about why gay bars have windows painted black, which they still do now. She's wrong. That is not why. By page 115 of the ebook I was reading, I just wanted everyone to shut up. All Molly does is fuck Kate's brains out and goes to funerals! All Kate does is cheat and whine. Not for a moment in this book did I care about Peter. Kate makes a disgusting joke about AIDS funerals. That's when she went from unbelievably annoying and insufferable into me officially hating her. She does start to dress as a man, probably to see what it's like, but due to her characterization and the writing, it comes off as Edgy Straight Woman. At least it shows we've progressed as a society. It's been fine for women to wear suits since the 70s or so, and especially encouraged in later decades.

The book ends on an odd note after a wall o'text and feels unfinished, even amongst the constant blather. This whole book was a bunch of blahblah that really ticked me off. Shulman claims Larsen ripped off her book to make a musical about straight people, WHEN THIS BOOK IS ABOUT THEM. .

I read once that Trudy and Daisy were Maureen's girlfriend and herself in Larsen's musical, respectively. They barely show up in the novel, and only near the end anyway. I was so curious when I started reading. I wanted to see Collins and Angel. I wondered who Mark, Roger, Maureen and Mimi would be. They were nowhere here. This book doesn't hit my plagiarism detector strongly at all. Larsen talked about this book while working on "Rent," though, so it is highly possible. He did base it also off of La Boheme, which I think is interesting. "Rent" is waaaay more about AIDS and gay people and dying than this novel is. Larsen took...a book that wasn't good, wasn't about AIDS and didn't humanize the gay community at all...and made it into a smash hit musical. He did it far, far better than Shulman, and I absolutely hate to say that for so many reasons. This book has no message. "Rent" has a ton, problematic as they may be. I am grateful for everything Shulman has done as an activist and I wish her continued success. Still skip this book. ( )

AIDS is a metaphor for "the beginning of the end of the world" in this dark gay-lesbian novel about Kate, a married artist dabbling in lesbian sex, Molly, her lesbian/activist lover, and Peter, Kate's Yuppie scene designer husband, who is confused by not only his wife's increasing interest in the gay world, but by the increasing gayness of the world itself.