The Backlot Gay Book Forum discussion

The Guncle
By Steven Rowley
Published by Putnam/Penguin, 2021
Five stars

Boy, this would make a great movie. Both smartly hilarious and tenderly heartbreaking, “The Guncle” is the story of Patrick O’Hara, a retired TV sitcom star who takes in his brother’s two young children after their mother’s death.

What I loved about this book in particular is that Patrick is in some ways a stereotypical Hollywood “A-Gay,” and the author really leans into that. Snarky and clever, Patrick is still young, but in that dangerous time of life (early forties) that is a danger zone in Hollywood. He has withdrawn into his lavish house in Palm Springs, and has all but become a recluse, including from his family.

He loves his brother Greg (and their more difficult older sister Clara), and his parents—all back in Connecticut; but Sara, his brother’s late wife, was Patrick’s best friend long before she met his brother and became his sister-in-law. Everybody is reeling from the death of this young woman, who by all accounts was wonderful, including Patrick. Maybe especially Patrick, because he was so far away during her illness.

There are plenty of references to “Auntie Mame,” as well as other sly pop culture insertions that the author sometimes doesn’t even bother to note. I’m old enough to be Patrick’s father, so I got them all. Maybe. It is this slightly camp edge to Patrick and his life that drives the emotions and the plot of this story. I laughed a lot; but I also found myself weeping a lot. There’s an enormous quantity of love and loss here, grief enough to touch every character and, ultimately, to bind them together.

In the end, it’s the story of a gay man who spent his life feeling “less than” in America, and who thrived and succeeded in spite of it. It is the man within himself, a man that Patrick has stopped seeing, that rises to the occasion to heal a broken family and bring them joy.