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Plays Well With Others

by Allan Gurganus

Summary

A novel about a group of friends in the New York City of the '80s whose promising lives are cut short by the AIDS epidemic. The story revolves around Robert, a handsome young composer famous for his string of romantic conquests, and two of the people who are in love with him: Hartley, a Southerner who comes to New York to try to succeed as a writer, and Angie, a determined, ambitious painter.

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Media Reviews

"A deft mixture of contrasting tones distinguishes this vigorous novel....Gurganus may not...be the spokesman for his generation that 'Plays Well' seems to claim, but he's unquestionably one of its most provocative and interesting stylists."

   -- Kirkus

"Allan Gurganus' moving new novel, 'Plays Well With Others,' takes the traditional form of the bildungsroman and gives it a tragic twist: Its youthful protagonists' loss of innocence-and achievement of wisdom-is accompanied by the knowledge of almost certain death. But...it is not solely concerned with the effects of the disease on its characters' lives; rather, it seeks to capture the pulse and beat of an era and a world-the world of aspiring young artists in New York in the 1980s, a world of ambition, extravagance, hilarity and disillusion....There are scenes...that are leaky with sentimentality, scenes that feel overwritten, stage-managed and contrived. And yet somehow these scenes never really undercut the emotion of Gurganus' story. Perhaps because he is dealing with such a terrifying illness, perhaps because he is dealing with untimely death and stolen innocence, his over-the-top style works as a kind of mirror of his characters' lives.    -- Michiko Kakutani

   -- New York Times

"[A] hilarious, overlong, but ultimately moving account of three young artists in Manhattan in the 1980s....This is a wickedly funny novel, unsentimental, free of self-exculpation and determined to keep a bright face on things despite the subject matter."    -- Peter Kurth

   -- Salon

"Trying to do too much, perhaps, he falls into a sentimentality which frequently approaches soap opera, despite the wit of the writing."    -- Richard Eder

   -- Los Angeles Times Book Review

"...Gurganus's most personal book to date, a work that finds him at once passionate and ironic, holding up things like friendship and sex to a complex, prismatic light....He's a writer who doesn't cheat on his readers or, in the end, on his characters."    -- Louis Bayard

   -- Washington Post Book World

Bibliographic Details

Publisher: Random House Inc
Published date: 1999
Size: 5.25 x 8.25 inches
Weight: 0.7 pounds
Pages: 337

Publisher's Notes

Plays Well with Others chronicles a ragtag group of gifted kids who come to seek their fortunes; they find the low-paying joys of making art and the heady education only multiple erotic partners can provide. Having mythologized each other through the boom years, having commenced becoming "names", they suddenly encounter a brand-new disease like something out of fifth-rate sci-fi. Friends are soon questioning how much they really owe each other; they're left with the ancient consolation of one another's company and help. We watch this egotistic circle forge its single greatest masterwork: a healthy community.

Other Editions

• Hardcover - Random House Inc (1997) - from $1.00
• Paperback Reprint - Random House Inc (1999) - from $1.00

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