The Prettiest Star

Written by:
Carter Sickels

Unabridged Audiobook

Ratings
Book
15
Narrator
7
Release Date
May 2020
Duration
10 hours 21 minutes
Summary
Small-town Appalachia doesn't have a lot going for it, but it's where Brian is from, where his family is, and where he's chosen to return to die.

At eighteen, Brian, like so many other promising young gay men, arrived in New York City without much more than a love for the freedom and release from his past that it promised. But within six short years, AIDS would claim his lover, his friends, and his future. With nothing left in New York but memories of death, Brian decides to write his mother a letter asking to come back to the place, and family, he was once so desperate to escape.

Set in 1986, a year after Rock Hudson's death shifted the public consciousness of the epidemic and brought the news of AIDS into living rooms and kitchens across America, The Prettiest Star is part Dog Years by Mark Doty and part Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt. But it is also an urgent story now: it a novel about the politics and fragility of the body; it is a novel about sex and shame. And it is a novel that speaks to the question of what home and family means when we try to forge a life for ourselves in a world that can be harsh and unpredictable.

Contains mature themes.
Reviews
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Anonymous

Got bored. Stopped listening. Couldn’t get back into it.

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Anonymous

Great characters. Have your Kleenex nearby.

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Anonymous

I really like this book , it touched my heart as I have friends and family , my husband who are HIV+ . And some who are gay as well . So I get the story deep in my soul . Good read/listen !

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Anonymous

I loved the descriptions and characters. I felt i was thrown back into 80's. I could picture each character and loved the narration. Good story. Lots of perspective and reasonable emotion from each character.

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Anonymous

It's good but would have been better if there had been more Brian chapters and less of his mother Sharon and his sister Jess.

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