A Friend of Dorothy’s by Richard Willett (Book Review #2265)

A Friend of Dorothy’s is a compelling work of fiction by Richard Willett that captures both the heart-wrenching impact of AIDS during the 1980s and the more subtle, but just as damaging, psychological effects on individuals who lived their lives without the benefit of a visible sexual identity. The novel is told from the perspective of Eric Summerfeld, a gay man who has immigrated from Canada to the United States. Willet captures many of the emotions associated with loss, longing, grief, and emotional self-denial through Eric’s narrative. Eric, a 27-year-old man, finds himself paralyzed in a state of hesitation. While he longs for love and acceptance, he feels unworthy of either. Eric projects himself as straight and carries with him all of the burdens of a repressed gay man. He desires upward mobility through work, but remains in a low-paying, dead-end job.

Eric has also suffered through a fractured national identity; he was born in Hollywood, raised in Canada, and now finds himself lost between two different cultures.
The stark contrast between Eric and Dale serves to enhance their friendship — a friendship that is tender, yet fraught with tension. As Dale slowly descends into the clutches of AIDS, Eric is forced to take an active role in supporting Dale and ultimately, in finding his own voice. Through this experience, Eric embarks on a long, painful road to becoming his authentic self.
In Richard Willett’s A Friend of Dorothy’s, the author achieves a perfect balance between emotion and drama with a fantastic lack of melodrama when addressing issues such as unrequited love, AIDS, and internalised homophobia. Instead, Willett masterfully develops a sense of quiet truth that runs throughout the novel. By providing such vivid detail into Eric’s emotional landscape, Willett allows the reader to experience all of the pain and frustration that Eric feels; each word written by Willett evokes feelings of pain between the lines of the text — the things that Eric cannot express, the people that Eric cannot touch and the parts of Eric that he is unable to confront.
The writing is both intelligent and literary. It is a book that has elements of a character study, but is written with an understanding of an era that offered moments of hope for many people before the devastation of the AIDS epidemic. Eric is haunted by the ghosts of lost loves, unrequited desires, and societal expectations. His longing for Glenn, the all-American boy next door, serves as a reminder of all the things that Eric feels are unattainable to him.
At its heart, A Friend of Dorothy’s is a novel about masks; masks we wear to protect ourselves and must ultimately shed to become whole human beings. Dale’s death not only represents a significant loss to Eric but also serves as a powerful catalyst for him to finally show the world who he is.
A Friend of Dorothy’s is a work that will resonate with readers for many years to come as they reflect on the effects of the AIDS epidemic and on their own feelings of being misunderstood or invisible. It is a novel that does not shout, but instead echoes long after the last page has been read.

Written by Jeyran Main

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