The Marble Quilt

I have to admit I've been a fan of David Leavitt's writing for some time, and I've read almost everything he has ever published. I had my doubts about his handling nine short stories, but after repeated reminders by my friends who loved this book that I should read it, I finally sat down and read the book right through in one evening. I wasn't disappointed in the least. Here is a book of short stories that are timeless, that I believe will be long remembered and become classics. David is truly experimenting with different forms of writing and styles here, and he is very successful....Although all of the nine stories are exceptionally good, the three that stand out for me, and I believe the majority of readers, are definitely, "The Infection Scene", "Black Box, and the title story, "The Marble Quilt". "The Infection Scene" parallels the past and present of two different lives. It deals with the life of Lord Alfred Douglas, during and after his affair with Oscar Wilde, and the life of a fictitious young man named Christopher, who has an obsession with getting AIDS by having unprotected ...[realations] with his lover named Anthony, who is HIV- positive. It shows how restraint & doing the safe thing is just too hard for some people to cope with. It has the power, in this case, to make Christopher do a deadly thing, and not care about the end results. "The Black Box" deals with the death of Bob Bookman's lover... And "The Marble Quilt" tells the story of Vincent, who's ex-lover Tom, is found murdered in his apartment in Rome. Each story deals with death in a different way, and it's the intriguing results that affects the remaining partners' lives that make these stories so realistic and enjoyable.These stories may sound depressing to read, but they're not. They are as much about living as they are about dying. You'll find yourself asking, "What would I do in the same situations". I'm still thinking about it myself. This is one of David Leavitt's best books yet. It's for sure, we can look forward to more brilliant writing like this from this wonderful author. Highly Recommended!

I rush to read David Leavitt's fiction and non-fiction books as each is published, much the way a Stephen King or John Grisham fan might run to get their newest books. The nine stories contained in THE MARBLE QUILT contain some of the best, most exciting writing Leavitt has ever done. They are on a par with his best novels like THE LOST LANGUAGE OF CRANES and the stories in his masterly FAMILY DANCING.The title story is one of Leavitt's strangest and most satisfying: in several brief episodes, an American is questioned by Italian police in the matter of his ex-lover's murder. The reader never gets a neat solution to who the murderer is nor why or when or how Tom was killed, but parts of his life, including his new hobby of stealing pieces of marble, reveal an anger and hostility toward the narrator/lover who obviously is more in control of his emotions, more rational, more able to live the life of an outsider.In THE INFECTION SCENE Lord Alfred Douglas, before, during and after his affair with Oscar Wilde is contrasted, in alternating scenes, with a present day, young San Franciscan, who naively, dangerously believes that his love for a man infected with HIV, can only be tested and proven by becoming infected himself. I found Leavitt's footnotes charming and funny and (possibly) justifiably spiteful given the brouhaha surrounding, arguably, his best novel WHILE ENGLAND SLEEPS.In, perhaps, the saddest of the stories, BLACK BOX, the grieving widower of a famous designer killed in an unexplained plane crash becomes involved emotionally, physically and intellectually with a stranger who, at every turn, presents surprise after horrible surprise, including a videotape of the dead designer waiting for his plane in the airport.In these stories, Leavitt experiments with form and content; he brings humor to even the most gloomy of subjects and gives the reader great, great pleasure. These are brilliant stories which must be savored and re-read. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

David Leavitt is a gifted writer and storyteller, one of the best in his genre. This book of novellas/short stories/preNovels succeeds on all levels for this reader. Varied in content and style, these nine tales feel like a testing ground for works that may be brewing in Leavitt's fertile mind. Where is the new thread to be found in each of these stories? It seems that we are being introduced to the unspoken dialogue that holds the distance between apparently proximal characters, whether that proximity is a longstanding relationship being evaluated in retrospect, or a small cabin on a train holding related but highly disparate characters. Leavitt seems to be taking an observor's distance, analyzing why things aren't as they appear. Even relating history (Oscar Wilde's life as played out thorugh the adroitly drawn quasi-lover Bosie) or putting under the microscope the lives of a family of two women who were always thought to be sisters........, etc., or playing out the cruelty of gossip as filtered through the third person of email - each of these tales of misperception or variation of viewpoint are drawn with Leavitt's sharply polished skills with the English language. The author proves yet again that his imagination is alive and well and shows only positive signs of continuing to mature as a potent literary force. Well worth your reading time!

"The Marble Quilt" is a remarkable and varied collection of short fiction by David Leavitt. Contrary to most collections I've encountered, I found that each of these pieces were possessed of a certain captivating quality. Though I won't claim to have been mesmerized by each story, the majority are worthy of being singled out, though space permits me to mention only three. "The List" is an epistolary story for the computer age. "The Black Box" is an ironically timed piece which concerns a man coming to terms with the loss of his companion in a plane crash. "Crossing St. Gottard," is the first story in the collection and also first in my heart. An outstanding prose piece worthy of Forster. Erotically charged, yet never coarse. One is left contented if not quite sated. These stories enhance Mr. Leavitt's already considerable reputation as a gifted chronicler of the American experiance.

David Leavitt is the type of literary gem that falls into our laps once in a generation, multifaceted and exquisitely polished. THE MARBLE QUILT is imbued with the genius and talent Leavitt demonstrated in his earlier short story collections, proving that his sense of observed reality has never been keener. These nine tales aren't Leavitt's usual stories, though, the ones of safe suburban gays with respectable jobs and solid bank accounts. In this collection, Leavitt paints frightening, heretofore uncharted landscapes. Here, Leavitt introduces us to dark personalities and dark realities: an American being interrogated in Italy weighs his own involvement in the mysterious murder of an ex-lover ("The Marble Quilt"); an introverted book dealer, facing the untimely death of his lover in a plane explosion, has his mourning further complicated by the appearance of a troubling video tape ("Black Box"); an elderly caregiver is burdened with the discovery of a well-buried family secret, unearthed by a distant young cousin preparing her thesis ("The Scruff of the Neck"). In the collection's longest piece, "The Infection Scene," Leavitt skillfully presents two paralleled stories separated by the time of a hundred years, juxtaposing the past against our often-perplexing present. The first story revolves around Lord Alfred ("Bosie") Douglas, whose sexual exploration is painfully confined by the morals of nineteenth-century Europe. The second and more sinister story involves a modern-day California youth named Christopher, who hungers to rebel against the confining realities of man-to-man sex in the 1990s. Christopher suspects that the rules of safe sex are a lie, "perpetuated by Dead White Males in order to suppress the freedom of gay people," and he craves a taste of "real abandon, release without restraint" by purposefully becoming infected with HIV. Such a seroconversion, he reasons, will bring him closer to his HIV-positive lover Anthony. Is it really that simple? Who could ever hope to make sense of such a plan? Leavitt does, by illustrating that no human longing, despite the conditions, is ever unprecedented. These seemingly disparate narratives coincidedly explore the intimate connotations of infection and betrayal, finally coming together in a confluence of clarity in the last sentence, the penned sentiments of a dead man. Lest the reader think these tales are about death and disease, make no mistake; these stories are clearly about the living. They're about facing everyday adversity that looms before us "black as death itself," but, more so, these stories represent survival of such adversity, whether it be real or imagined, whether it be the death of a loved one or an unexpected betrayal. Above all things, these stories represent the dark tunnels we all face--and the promise of the rebirth that follows.