The narrator tours Europe in the 1960s, luxuriating in his homosexual lifestyle; he later returns to New York's Greenwich Village where the Stonewall rebellion marks the beginning of the gay rights movement. An AIDS ending is ``ham-handed'' in an otherwise ``distinguished and humorous portrait of a vanished age,'' said PW . (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

This second installment of Picano's fictionalized autobiography (following Ambidextrous: The Secret Lives of Children , Gay. Pr., 1985) covers a relatively brief period in the mid-1960s when the author was in his early 20s. It has two main focal points--a sojourn in Rome during which he fulfills his objective of becoming homosexual and his life as one of the Jane Street ``girls'' back in New York a couple of years prior to Stonewall. In part the tale of a young man's search for identity and an examination of life in a world on the verge of change, its often pretentious, self-indulgent, and gossipy tone also suggests a put-on (at least one hopes it's a put-on) of the tell-it-all tales now so popular. It is further marred by loose editing (i.e., implausible time frames, Michael York playing Tybalt and not Mercutio in Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet ) and a weak ending. Still, it has some wonderful episodes--e.g., tea with ``aunty'' W.H. Auden--and thus should find an audience. For popular fiction collections.-- David W. Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersburg, Fla. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.