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The Desperates
Edmund was dying, but now he isn't. Granted a reprieve from the HIV that took everyone he loved away from him, Edmund decides-after a period of holing up in his Rosedale home-to jump-start his new lease on life by diving hard into the sex and drugs of the party scene. Teresa is dying, and she's livid. Determined not to let her illness slow her down, she uses the year she has remaining to avenge past grievances and correct certain "mistakes" she feels she made-both in connection to her estranged son. Joel isn't dying, and probably won't be for a while. Coddled to a state of perpetual naivety by his mother, he moves to the big city of Toronto with dreams of becoming an artist and finding true love. What he finds is somewhat less than he bargained for-though he won't admit it. In telling the intersecting stories of Edmund, Teresa, and Joel-all of whom leave trails of hopeful chaos in their wake-ReLit Award-winning author Greg Kearney has painted a blackly comic, yet surprisingly earnest, portrait of modern loneliness. The Desperates is one of the rare novels that leaves you laughing even as it breaks your heart.
232 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2013
1 person is currently reading
73 people want to read
About the author
Greg Kearney
6 books10 followersGreg Kearney is a Canadian writer. Formerly a humour columnist for Xtra! magazine from 1999 to 2005, he published his debut short story collection, Mommy Daddy Baby in 2004.
Originally from Kenora, Ontario, Kearney is currently based in Toronto, where he studied theatre at York University. He was awarded an Honour of Distinction from the Dayne Ogilvie Prize in 2009.
Kearney’s second short story collection, Pretty, published in 2011, won a ReLit Award in the short fiction category in 2012. His first novel, The Desperates, was published by Cormorant Books in 2013 and was a Lambda and ReLit finalist.
He is currently at work on his second novel, Maynard Keener.
Originally from Kenora, Ontario, Kearney is currently based in Toronto, where he studied theatre at York University. He was awarded an Honour of Distinction from the Dayne Ogilvie Prize in 2009.
Kearney’s second short story collection, Pretty, published in 2011, won a ReLit Award in the short fiction category in 2012. His first novel, The Desperates, was published by Cormorant Books in 2013 and was a Lambda and ReLit finalist.
He is currently at work on his second novel, Maynard Keener.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
August 31, 2022
This was absolutely everything! Fiercely satirical, uproariously funny, intimate, raunchy, touching: both delightfully and painfully real.
There's such liveliness and perfect imperfection to these personalities, which made me fall hopelessly in love with the sheer authenticity of them; their calculated nastiness, wanton toxicity, their desperate lust and wont to feel alive, their underlying sweetness and compassion, their sass, eccentricity and confusion, the whole tragedy and joy and humanity of them; all the things to make them so beautifully true and flawed.
From one emotion to another, there wasn't a dull moment in this. And, while the casually delicate pathos left lingering after the story feels blissfully unique, I would so readily have read at least doubly this much of these outrageous and unfortunate individuals.
Such a glorious human farce.
(More in the reading updates below)
There's such liveliness and perfect imperfection to these personalities, which made me fall hopelessly in love with the sheer authenticity of them; their calculated nastiness, wanton toxicity, their desperate lust and wont to feel alive, their underlying sweetness and compassion, their sass, eccentricity and confusion, the whole tragedy and joy and humanity of them; all the things to make them so beautifully true and flawed.
From one emotion to another, there wasn't a dull moment in this. And, while the casually delicate pathos left lingering after the story feels blissfully unique, I would so readily have read at least doubly this much of these outrageous and unfortunate individuals.
Such a glorious human farce.
(More in the reading updates below)
February 11, 2015
Did I read the same book as all these other reviewers? One reviewer compared this book to Dickens. Dickens! I read this book for my book club and if it hadn't of been chosen I wouldn't have finished it. As it was I needed a break after the first half. The second half got better, or perhaps I became more immune to the story, but the book is filled with horrible, awful people you wouldn't want to be around for one second or even to hear about second hand. Then to fill a book with them!
The book had three characters, Edmund who is killing himself after his lover died of AIDS. He hasn't had a job since 1992 but still owns a house and now pays hookers to smoke meth with him all day. This he does through the whole book, many times. The sex scenes in the book, almost all involve him and drugs and a lack of hard-ons, and while some may call this shocking, it's just sad, sad. The title of the book is correct, The Desperates, these are the most desperate, lonely, messed-up people you will ever meet. So desperate I don't think they could even exist in real life, where would they get the self-confidence to leave the house?
While on drugs, one of the characters wants rough sex and the book says:
"If there is no real threat that Binny might be maimed or murdered he starts to lose interest."
This idea has been done before by John Rechy and in Dancer from the Dance, and it's been done better. Previously it was satire, and a comment on gay culture. This book has no comment, it's done here as just another example of sad.
Another character refers to his job as:
"I perform my - I have these - I write - I perform my poetry, except it's not really poetry, it's more like - statements, that I recite in a really emphatic way."
Sounds brilliant. Now this may be satire, at least one would hope, but how do you make fun of your main character without making the whole book seem like a joke? I see this as just another example of people with no grasp of reality acting badly. Even the people in Kenora, you've never seen such white trash, each petty and scraping through.
The entire book is terrible, awful people I don't want to know, or even acknowledge their existence.
Dickens!
The book had three characters, Edmund who is killing himself after his lover died of AIDS. He hasn't had a job since 1992 but still owns a house and now pays hookers to smoke meth with him all day. This he does through the whole book, many times. The sex scenes in the book, almost all involve him and drugs and a lack of hard-ons, and while some may call this shocking, it's just sad, sad. The title of the book is correct, The Desperates, these are the most desperate, lonely, messed-up people you will ever meet. So desperate I don't think they could even exist in real life, where would they get the self-confidence to leave the house?
While on drugs, one of the characters wants rough sex and the book says:
"If there is no real threat that Binny might be maimed or murdered he starts to lose interest."
This idea has been done before by John Rechy and in Dancer from the Dance, and it's been done better. Previously it was satire, and a comment on gay culture. This book has no comment, it's done here as just another example of sad.
Another character refers to his job as:
"I perform my - I have these - I write - I perform my poetry, except it's not really poetry, it's more like - statements, that I recite in a really emphatic way."
Sounds brilliant. Now this may be satire, at least one would hope, but how do you make fun of your main character without making the whole book seem like a joke? I see this as just another example of people with no grasp of reality acting badly. Even the people in Kenora, you've never seen such white trash, each petty and scraping through.
The entire book is terrible, awful people I don't want to know, or even acknowledge their existence.
Dickens!
January 26, 2014
Greg Kearney's early story collections were shocking and delightful. They announced an outrageous talent, with a voracious eye for everything, and a wonky joy in the play of language. All of that is present in his much anticipated first novel, The Desperates, but it's become the icing on something more substantial. You'll gasp and laugh and have to read bits of it out loud because it's so deliciously screwy. And all the while, underneath that frosting, is a powerful grace that will grip you and deepen your appreciation of the world. If the sparkling naughty comedy is candy for your brain, the wise and generous undercurrent is food for your soul. All of the characters are wounded and ordinary, you know folks like this, cityfolk with their sophisticated kinks and their disguised longings to connect, smalltownfolk with their tiny battles for social status and their disguised longings to be unique. The novel shifts back and forth from Toronto to Kenora, places the author has lived in and spied on meticulously. Like Dickens he has a way to exaggerate for comic and sentimental impact that somehow gets at a deeper realism. It's more than a trick, it's a lust for squeezing stories out of the world that will impact the reader. Kearney's earlier writing seemed to need the reader too much, a need to draw shock and laughter, and did seem like clever--very clever and very entertaining--tricks, this novel has the remove of great literature. It doesn't need anything. It's perfectly self contained. There isn't a wasted word, a flaccid scene, any descriptive filler, or unnecessary lingering only to milk a moment. It just sits generously beside its characters and notices everything. The way people talk, the things they say and don't say and how they say and don't say them, what they do with their hands, which bits of culture they've made their own and which things they've been oblivious to, and mostly how they hurt and in trying to ease their hurt, hurt each other. It's a sad book. It's the funniest sad book I can think of. But it's not desperate. You feel respect for all these people, the author's steady eye has caught what's great about them, what's heroic, even in their failings.
I think there may be a few readers put off by the realism of the gay sex and drugs, and perhaps some others who won't want to spend time with such accurate cancer reporting. I hope they'll push through their reactions because this is a book that can help you be in the world with a little more understanding a little more generosity a little more appreciation and a lot more zest.
The only Canadian novel remotely like it, is Barbara Gowdy's Mr. Sandman, which has the same mix of funny/sad, real/surreal, lively-surface/graceful-depth. What's it like? Imagine Samuel Beckett wrote a small town sitcom and a big city porn script; imagine the pages got shuffled and mixed together; imagine Dickens and Nabokov each had a hand in warming it (with heart, with wit) and polishing it up; imagine Jane Austin had her say, keeping it vigorously close to the way a society really lives; imagine Mordecai Richler screening it to filter out any bullshit or boring bits; and then forget all that because a committee couldn't have written this singular vision. Kearney is his own man, an utterly unique voice. If this book languishes in the ghetto of "gay literature" or even the bigger one of "Canadian literature" it will be the world's sad loss.
I think there may be a few readers put off by the realism of the gay sex and drugs, and perhaps some others who won't want to spend time with such accurate cancer reporting. I hope they'll push through their reactions because this is a book that can help you be in the world with a little more understanding a little more generosity a little more appreciation and a lot more zest.
The only Canadian novel remotely like it, is Barbara Gowdy's Mr. Sandman, which has the same mix of funny/sad, real/surreal, lively-surface/graceful-depth. What's it like? Imagine Samuel Beckett wrote a small town sitcom and a big city porn script; imagine the pages got shuffled and mixed together; imagine Dickens and Nabokov each had a hand in warming it (with heart, with wit) and polishing it up; imagine Jane Austin had her say, keeping it vigorously close to the way a society really lives; imagine Mordecai Richler screening it to filter out any bullshit or boring bits; and then forget all that because a committee couldn't have written this singular vision. Kearney is his own man, an utterly unique voice. If this book languishes in the ghetto of "gay literature" or even the bigger one of "Canadian literature" it will be the world's sad loss.
March 29, 2014
I'm still trying to figure out how this book could be so off-kilter but so spot on. Through some of the darkest humor, and with whiplash-inducing turns of emotion, Kearney manages to make the topics the themes touch upon both endearing and hilarious (and usually with a shame-inducing quality that makes you ponder the type of person you are to find such things funny).
February 1, 2015
Greg Kearney takes on a lot in his debut novel: dysfunctional families, cancer, HIV-positive gay men living with AIDS survivors' guilt, the PNP scene, small-town niceties vs. big city cynicism...
But once you get used to his satiric tone, absurd but hilarious dialogue and go-for-broke narrative drive, it all comes together. The author is a former humour columnist with the gay and lesbian publication Xtra!, so many scenes are very funny. Some examples:
And he's got a sharp eye, too. Here's his description of Binny, a young hustler with a bad drug habit and a death wish: he had a "fist of a face, wind burnt and blunt. With small spiteful grey eyes and a tight angled mouth, like a hasty hem."
Kearney's characters, while heightened and often outrageously, intentionally unlikeable, are sharply written and refuse to be ignored.
I think that's one of the things I liked about the book. These are characters on the margins of society, but they're so self-involved and narcissistic, they don't see themselves as marginalized.
It's not a perfect book, but Kearney has a distinct voice and I look forward to his next novel.
But once you get used to his satiric tone, absurd but hilarious dialogue and go-for-broke narrative drive, it all comes together. The author is a former humour columnist with the gay and lesbian publication Xtra!, so many scenes are very funny. Some examples:
[Joel thought] Donald might be "one of those musty, benignly insane people who won't stop talking about something arcane and then starts screaming or falls asleep suddenly."
"Edmund only hung out with white gay men whose issues mostly revolved around 'learning to feel' and 'daring to love again after the death of a dog'"
And he's got a sharp eye, too. Here's his description of Binny, a young hustler with a bad drug habit and a death wish: he had a "fist of a face, wind burnt and blunt. With small spiteful grey eyes and a tight angled mouth, like a hasty hem."
Kearney's characters, while heightened and often outrageously, intentionally unlikeable, are sharply written and refuse to be ignored.
I think that's one of the things I liked about the book. These are characters on the margins of society, but they're so self-involved and narcissistic, they don't see themselves as marginalized.
It's not a perfect book, but Kearney has a distinct voice and I look forward to his next novel.
March 1, 2017
I wanted to like it. Really, I did. All of the characters were awful and the story didn't go anywhere interesting. I just felt like I should finish it, since I'd already made it about halfway through by the time I felt like giving up. Funny? I didn't even laugh once. At least I can say it was original. I'm sure I'll never read anything like it.
February 11, 2015
Well this certainly lived up to its title. There's not much to say about this one beyond what I've already said. These are some very sad and desperate people living some plain desperate lives.
March 12, 2023
I worked on this book while I was at Dundurn Press and loved every moment of its immersive qualities. It definitely influenced my own writing in terms of pacing and painting a scene in detail. Highly recommended.
September 27, 2017
Very good. I will read author again.
November 21, 2016
A promising book that takes u on a crescendo of funny folks and witty situations but stop mid way and takes a dive towards the dark.
THe characters in the book are adorable: Joel the young guy beginning gay life, Hugh his father and Teresa his mother, Edmund the gay man who is grieving his dead lover and ends up meeting Joel intitally through an sex chat phone encounter... and we see the lives of Edmund and Joel grow together and apart... The book is further filled with more funny characters... yet is it the authors' characterization of the black lady, Anita while initially funny starts raising question on the tone and tenor of the book. A rehashing of the lady's hair and her presence by the white grandmother of Joel, makes us wonder why the author would put in such an archaic situation. In the end, when Joel's mother Teresa passes away, the "making a pass at his father" seems outright disrespectful towards Joel who struggled with Teresa's rejection of him due to his homosexuality!
A distinctively Canadian voice, the book has many beautiful and laughable moments. Yet its characterization of one of the main gay protagonist and a woman of colour in the book towards the end has raised a lot of questions. Nonetheless a enjoyable and funny read for the most part.
THe characters in the book are adorable: Joel the young guy beginning gay life, Hugh his father and Teresa his mother, Edmund the gay man who is grieving his dead lover and ends up meeting Joel intitally through an sex chat phone encounter... and we see the lives of Edmund and Joel grow together and apart... The book is further filled with more funny characters... yet is it the authors' characterization of the black lady, Anita while initially funny starts raising question on the tone and tenor of the book. A rehashing of the lady's hair and her presence by the white grandmother of Joel, makes us wonder why the author would put in such an archaic situation. In the end, when Joel's mother Teresa passes away, the "making a pass at his father" seems outright disrespectful towards Joel who struggled with Teresa's rejection of him due to his homosexuality!
A distinctively Canadian voice, the book has many beautiful and laughable moments. Yet its characterization of one of the main gay protagonist and a woman of colour in the book towards the end has raised a lot of questions. Nonetheless a enjoyable and funny read for the most part.
March 3, 2017
For me, this was a gem. Though it's a novel about desperation in a variety of forms, it's wickedly funny. And by wickedly funny, I mean one step shy of schadenfreude. Yet however desperate Kearney's characters become, they never lose their humanity. So there's always something in myself I'm laughing at right along with the absurdity on the page. It's heartbreaking, but with a hilarity and affection that somehow makes it OK. By the end, I found myself thinking that sometimes the only response to catastrophe is to say "Well, shit happens, let's have another beer." Humans muddle through they best they can, and I think this book reminded me how important that is
August 5, 2016
Written in a clipped, fast-paced manner reminiscent of Douglas Coupland's early books, The Desperates is Kearney's first book after a couple of short story collections. Each chapter tells the story of different characters who are all linked together. It is centred around a young gay male trying to figure out who he is as he navigates his life in Toronto in the late 1990s. The narratives involve drug use and HIV and features Toronto as a character.
February 5, 2016
Often humorous, the life of a HIV positive man who has lost his lover tries to find some attachment in the world by calling a sex hot line only to meet up with a gay youth also looking for some attachment, whose mother is dying of cancer and full of venom. The desperate efforts that they take in seeking this attachment and the characters of family and associates make for fun plot lines. However, in the end there is no resolution for any of the characters.
March 7, 2014
Beautiful. Moving. Hilarious. Inappropriate. Gut wrenching. Sexy.
June 8, 2014
I devoured this book while on holiday. I loved Kearney's weird, honest and uncomfortable descriptions of family, relationships, grief and sex.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews