The Prettiest Star by Carter Sickels




This is one of the most searing, beautifully written, heart-wrenching, and insightful novels I have read in years (and I read a lot, especially in the area of gay fiction). If I were an English teacher, I would teach this book to my classes - it's that good. It took me on an emotional roller coaster ride with peaks and valleys of love and hatred and terror and bravery. I couldn't put it down.

One of the reasons this book spoke to me is how closely it hit home. I was a teenager in the 1980s and remember the "Gay Plague" headlines that terrified people everywhere, including people like me, who were terrified not just about AIDS, but about the sexual thoughts that swirled around in my head and what they might mean about me and who I was.

I remember the story of the young man in West Virginia who wanted to swim in a public pool on a hot day and created a local and national uproar that Oprah covered with a humanity lacking most everywhere else. I remember the shock of Rock Hudson's AIDS diagnosis and his gaunt face on magazine covers. I remember reading about young men who had escaped the hatred and small mindedness of their hometowns and then had to come back because they needed a place to die. I also remember a pervasive sense in the world that gay people deserved to get AIDS because of the perverted sex they had (i.e., men sleeping with men). I am happy the world is a better place, but I also think it is important to remember the shameful past (and the beauty and selflessness that shown through in even the darkest times).

THE PRETTIEST STAR captures all of the above with a haunting beauty and a masterful use of language and structure. It deserves to be an American classic. Thank you, Carter Sickels, for giving us this great gift.

5 stars!





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