Nightswimmer

by Joseph Olshan

Book Overview

The award-winning author of Clara's Heart crafts a vivid mosaic of the passions and pressures of gay life in New York City as two men find their all-consuming affair threatened by the cynicism of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0671885804
• ISBN13: 9780671885809
• Release Date: September 1994
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 252 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.1" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

Abreast with the best of them

Joseph Olshan has achieved a nearly impossible task: a successful novel about the kaleidoscope of emotional rides that constitute the anticipation, the terror, the neuroses/psychoses, the obsession and the gamut of highs and lows of that strange encounter called 'falling in love'. Not that potent love stories are oddities, but when the characters are all males in varying degrees of acceptance/indulgence of being gay, such rollercoaster rides often become either merely taudry, steamy sex encounters or distanced longings such as the wondrous "Maurice" of EM Forster. Nightswimmer takes us many places we know and more places we haven't been, and does so in such convincing style that we feel like part of the in-crowd of these perfectly drawn characters. For the reader who wants to understand both sides of the approach/avoidance magnet of being hopelessly in love, here it is. With enough use of metaphor to keep the story universal, Olshan has written a durable novel that already is showing the test of time. I'm happy this book is becoming more available. Recommended highly - thanks to a friend's recommendation!

"Nightswimmer" All Aglow

While I had read mostly decent reviews of "Nightswimmer", I went into this book with a bit of skepticism. So often, gay-themed novels barely qualify as true literature. Thankfully, Joseph Olshan is a first-class author who takes this multi-dimentional story and enhances it with a very unique perspective--written almost as an extended, detailed love letter. It is refreshing to find a book about mature men who question and struggle with love, passion, relationships, commitment, and the role personal history plays in each one's future. A definite read for anyone looking for a quality story about love and loss that just happens to feature gay men.

a story about finding love in a dark, treacherous seascape

In words that flow as graceful as a river and strike as sharp as a waterfall, Joseph Olshan has vividly captured the unbearable ordeal of taking another chance at love. In haunting prose, he has begun to unlock a mystery of the human heart -- how it yearns to be loved, yet can't bear to let go of the pain which has been too familiar. By beginning to unlock this door, the reader is compelled to open it, revealing inner wounds which has never healed -- wounds which are always felt, but ignored in fear of recognizing its self-inflicted nature. The author has painted a remarkably bleak tale of this truth, conjuring tidal waves of loneliness, nostalgia, regret, hope and understanding. Using the perfect metaphor for life -- water -- he shifts waves of undiluted empathy to his tortured characters, involving the reader to their inner turbulences, confusing the compass to a calmness that is dreamt by all, but at the same time dreaded for its unmistakable stillness. I was touched by the sheer power if this story, saddened by my subsequent reflections on our plight to find companionship and nearly driven to tears after realizing how much of oneself is torn in the process.

Even more amazing that his most recent book

I happened upon Olshan's most recent novel, Vanitas, because I heard it depicted New Orleans. I enjoyed it immensely and then on a lark read Nightswimmer. Nightswimmer has to be one of the best, if not the best, modern love stories I have ever read. The fact that the characters happen to be gay ends up being quite incidental (I will admit, however, that I did learn a few things about love between men that I would never have known!). And yet these characters are people first and foremost, and the author makes you care deeply for them and more than that, identify with them. To be a heterosexual woman as I am and find this novel so moving, so compelling, so true to my life, I think is extradinary. What an astonishing writer this man is!