Hospital Time

The author, Amy Hoffman, writes about her friend, activist Mike Riegle, with whom she shared a long history of activism in the gay community and elsewhere. When Mike became increasingly debilitated by AIDS, Hoffman agreed to serve as the person to make health care decisions for him, and spent much time helping him negotiate his illness, along with other friends in the gay and lesbian community. I thought this book was great on my first reading of it, but a second reading really revealed to me the concise and intelligent way in which Hoffman artfully delivers the complex and painful truths and ambivalencies of her life and the lives of others. One theme explored in this memoir are the importance of the "created" family of friends in the gay and lesbian world, and how this family is often illegitimized when the "real" family shows up for a crisis...or a funeral. Another has to do with the real difficulties in loving other people,despite your pledges to them, especially when they are demanding and irrational--and they are dying, and you feel that you should be acting like a saint! I found this book particularly meaningful, having recently lost a dear (and complex and difficult)friend to AIDS, and working with feelings of guilt at not having done enough for him, but I think other readers would also enjoy it for many reasons, including its caustic wit, well-articulated rage, innovative narrative structure, and relevance to lesbian and gay lives. I recommend that you buy this unique, original, and affecting book, and encourage the author to keep on writing!