AFTERLIFE by Paul Monette (Avon: $8.95)....

AFTERLIFE by Paul Monette (Avon: $8.95). Monette, who described the illness and death of his lover in “Borrowed Time,” attempts to draw a portrait of “AIDS widowers”--men who have lost partners to the pandemic--in his most recent novel. In the opening chapters of the story, he identifies an important problem: Because no social patterns exist for them to follow, the three central characters must create ways to address their grief. But this promising beginning quickly degenerates into an improbable tale of exaggerations in which the rich are too rich, the sleazy too sleazy and the nice too nice. The dead men all were apparently unflaggingly warm, caring, bright, attractive and supportive; the well-heeled survivors allow their lives and careers to disintegrate, and devote all their time to whining. Monette is one of the first novelists to address the AIDS crisis in fiction, but this superficial book suggests that the definitive chronicler of that terrible disease has yet to emerge.