cover image Sex with Strangers

Sex with Strangers

Geoffrey Rees. Farrar Straus Giroux, $20 (245pp) ISBN 978-0-374-26165-8

The author of this fiction debut was a college student in both Chicago and New York--the two cities in which the novel is set. As if to prove his familiarity with these locales, Rees includes an overabundance of references to streets, landmarks and other local identity tags. Readers may wish he had applied similar verisimilitude to the personalities of his characters. As an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, Thomas Hobart, the protagonist, is ``adopted'' by a group of academic poseurs given to fatuous pronouncements (``beauty is nothing but a veil for death and destruction'') and smart labels such as ``Pomo-Homos'' (postmodern homosexuals). Later, Thomas pursues student life in New York, there encountering another eccentric band, virtually indistinguishable from his Chicago companions. Though Thomas is gay, there is a surprising lack of emotional connection among any of the characters. Thomas's furtive same-time-next-week sexual liaison in Chicago and a relationship in New York seem to indicate the futility of romantic attachments, and these ``strangers'' remain as distanced from the reader as from one another. There is not much action here, nor any revelatory insights; and while some descriptive passages convey atmosphere, they're generally verbose. (Nov.)