Reviews

• Highly recommend for people in life changing situations

  This is one of the most emotionally moving books I read. And it touches me on so many and very different levels. On the one hand there is the deep love between two partners, then there is the relationship with friends and relatives, laterhin you experience the awful suffering of a much beloved partner, what is predetermined and what must be endured. The question is, why to endure it. Could I stand it? The unbearable cruelty of helplessly watching the partner's torture. To know that you will follow him in the same way. How is that to endure? Could I do that. Would I? Would I seek a way out to end all suffering? Or would I fight for every single minute that remains? And then is there the medical aspect at this time. So little was known. There was so little help to alleviate the suffering. Paul Monette made the final journey with his beloved partner. This book describes his and Roger's pain. First and foremost it is about the disease of AIDS. However, this biography is parallel to many other infaust prognoses. And reading about it somehow gives strength and takes the reader by the hand. It enhances perception and changes attitudes in dealing with serious, life-changing illnesses. Roger Horwitz * 22. November 1941; † 22 October 1986 Paul Monette * 16. Oktober 1945; † 10. Februar 1995

• Incredibly powerful memoir

  Shattering, engrossing, pointillistic memoir. A glimpse back in time, re-creating the fear and overwhelming terror that was AIDS in the 1980s. Monette is a brilliant writer. Beyond the evocative and moving depictions of caring for his soulmate, he also offers a glimpse into a world now quite unimaginable except in memoir. By this I mean not only the experiences of a youngish people utterly devastated by a then-incurable disease, but also the erudite world of gay men in the 1980s. Not to generalize too much (there were plenty of airheads then too), but it was more common then for gay men, like Monette and his circle, to pride themselves for their role as culture-bearers, and by that I don't mean "culture" as in Taylor Swift. It's difficult to describe in full, until you read it, the time capsule this memoir opens up. It's written with a brutal honesty that was rare for a gay memoir of the era, with an unflinching and unapologetic look into the intricacies of gay relationships, which didn't then and don't know automatically play by the same rules as the heterosexual majority. As someone who was a teenager in 1980s California, and who was tangentially connected to one of the characters (long dead) in this book, I had a feeling of sense-memory opening up that I don't think I can adequately convey. Somehow I didn't read this book until 2022, but it brought me back to 1985 and 1986 so vividly. All I can say is read this memoir. It's incredibly sad, but such a worthwhile experience to understand what it was like to live in a time and under a cloud that younger gay men really can't fully comprehend. Reading this memoir is but one small step into comprehension.

• Wish I'd read this book 25 years ago

  What a deeply moving account of the AIDS calamity, especially for those who got sick first when there was no cure and very little support. The author lost his beloved spouse to the disease and wrote a memoir in order to try and go on living after Roger's tragic death in 1986. I'm grateful to Paul Monette for his courage and all the love and TLC he gave Roger during those horrible years. I hope he received love and TLC himself as his own health failed.

• The most powerful and poignant memoir I have ever read

  I hardly ever re-read a book, but I've read this memoir four times now and every time it is so hard to believe that Paul Monette is now long dead too, struck down aged 49 in 1996, the very year effective treatment for AIDS was eventually discovered and the dying began to stop. Borrowed Time is beautifully and carefully written, intimate in every sense, allowing us right over the doorstep of Paul and Roger's white stucco villa on Kings Road in West Hollywood. We sit with the men by the pool as they happily plan an exotic vacation to Egypt and Greece, their dog Puck at their feet. Roger has a cough, but it's only slight - it can't mean anything, surely? They've always been careful, especially since the first reports came out of New York. Paul met Roger when he was 28. They are soul mates, intellectual, literary men with a shared love for history and mythology. Their friendship group is huge, but two friends already have the virus and it creeps ever closer to them until finally, after a battery of painful tests, Roger is diagnosed with PCP, the terrible AIDS pneumonia. Roger battles AIDS for 19 months and is one of the first patients to be given the poisoned AZT chalice. The disease is brutal and Paul describes every grim symptom as Roger fights daily fevers to continue working as a lawyer, only to eventually lose his eyesight, the worst loss of all for a man who adored reading. My only negative with this book is the price, which has bizarrely more than doubled since I purchased it in 2016. £10.99 is off putting and will prevent people from reading this wonderful book. I'm certain Paul and Roger would not approve of the price increase. Everyone needs to be able to read their story.

• Great and deep insight from a very personal view into the start of the epedemic

  First time I really understood what has happened in the 80ies and early 90ies for gay people. Lived in 83 in Maryland as an exchange student in high school so I remember the time. You donot get this insight through a news article. Being German the English wording is a challenge for a foreigner. Have a dictionary aside while reading.

Purchase links