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A MIRROR OF US

TANAQUIL. By Donald Windham. Holt, Rinehart & Winston. 306 pages. $8.95.

But if Divin Amore has wounded you then there must be another beside yourself: and, for that other, you will gladly strive, gladly suffer, gladly die, or very gladly live, which is the hardest thing of all.

---Baron Corvo

With this quotation Donald Windham opens his latest novel, TANAQUIL, the story of two people in love set against the background of New York City from the late 1940's to the late 1950's. Windham develops Baron Corvo's statement and makes his own statement about love. What is love, and why do we fall in love? No one, of

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course, has given the conclusive answer to this ancient double question, but Windham in beautiful and sensitive prose succeeds in casting a bright light on the issue.

One of the writer's strong points is his characterization, and he brings Tanaquil of Florida and Frankie of Connecticut very much alive as they meet in a Times Square Bar (in what is actually a glorified pickup), go to bed together, fail in love, marry have two children, and undergo the vicissitudes of a long-term relationship. Tanaquil is the strong one. "Tanaquil summo loco nata," her father, a former Latin teacher used to quote to her. Tanaquil, my research reveals, was a semi-legendary queen of Rome who prophesied the future greatness of her husband and then helped him to gain the throne, and the Latin phrase means, "Tanaquil having been born in the highest place," (that is, of royalty). The analogy is apt, for in this novel the latter day Tanaquil aids her husband, and although he doesn't become great in the way the world calculates greatness, he does become a successful photographer and eventually a well integrated person.

It is Frankie the husband who makes this novel particularly interesting to gay readers. A

By George Brown

bisexual who veers more toward the heterosexual than the homosexual, he experienced his first homosexual experience when he was in his late teens and at least a dozen years later when the novel is ending, he is experiencing another. Between the two there were other, although not a lot of, homosexual experiences, including one the morning after his wedding to Tanaquil. And during their marriage he has a few random sexual episodes with women. Frankie loves Tanaquil, but his sexual expression does not flow in the one deep channel that hers does. Tanaquil is clear, consistent, and admirable while Frankie is complex and contradictory, at times appearing weak and not admirable. But then, isn't this life? Most of us are a patchwork of many different qualities of strong fabric and of weak.

the

Also of particular interest to gay readers is Page, the bisexual photographer who veers more toward the homosexual than heterosexual and who is a charming cynic who says there are only three reasons for unhappiness: being young, being ambitious and being in love. There is much discussion about bisexuality these days, it perhaps being even more out of

the closet than exclusive homosexuality. Windham makes a significant contribution to the understanding of this thread of life by well characterizing Frankie and Page, two very different people although their common meeting ground can be male sex. Frankie's first male lover, a macho truck driver, very different from both Frankie and Page, is also well done although his appearance is brief and in flashback. It seems apparent that there are more types in the homosexual world than there are in the entwining heterosexual world.

People of the art, fashion, and entertainment worlds thread through Tanaquil and Frankie's lives and Windham characterizes each effectively, if of necessity revealing one part of their lives. He can characterize effectively, even compelling, someone who exists even less on the periphery of the story than the truck driver. Example: "The waitress who handed him his eggs looked like a woman, condemned to death by cancer, who has put on more makeup and determined to carry on her job." Grim but beautiful.

This astute novelist also excels in evocation of mood. The parts of New York City which he describes come vividly alive, but then any scene that Windham describes comes vividly alive.

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