FICTION

HALF-WAY HOME by Paul Monette (Crown Publishers: $20; 262 pp.) . “I’m sorry you’re dying, kiddo, but everyone has it hard.” Sometimes dialogue hits you right in the face, it sounds so true; that is what happens when Paul Monette writes. It’s not that he tries to be outrageous at every twist of plot, or to force his characters into impossible corners; these things evolve naturally, just as being at the edge of a cliff naturally makes you feel dizzy. Tom is gay and he has AIDS. He’s a fringe actor with one wild role: Miss Jesus. Brian, his brother, is straight, sexually speaking, but Brian is running from the mob because of some crooked dealings back in Connecticut. He and his terribly shocked Catholic wife and their sweet 7-year-old son hide out at Tom’s Southern California beach house. This fast-paced novel swings between humor and tragedy, high camp and lowdown realism, gays and straights, winners and losers, people who are dying and people who are afraid to live.