Still Looking: A Novel Concerning Single Men

While satirizing what he sees as the simplicity of the current men's movement, Durstin tries to put a rounded spin on changing gender roles, relationship woes and male neuroses in his black-comic debut. Prompted by the suicide of an old buddy and the prodding of his men's group, ""Male Myths--A Journey,"" Ray Powell, the middle-aged and hyper-analytical narrator, recounts what is to be, in the parlance of his group, his ""primal story."" In the fictional northern Ohio college town of Crescent City, in the early 1980s, before AIDS made sex scary but well after the free-love days, Ray's longtime lover, Lana, runs off with a pizza boy. Hurt and bewildered, Ray falls in with three bachelor friends even more battle-scarred and dysfunctional than he, each overflowing with elaborate opinions and techniques to employ in the battle of the sexes. Ray, working as a high-school teacher, takes his own path, falling awkwardly in love with a pretty 17-year-old student. Durstin uses the present-day men's group as a frame for Ray's story and packs his narrative with satirical shots at the recriminations and oversimplifications of men and women alike, as well as at their organized soul-searching movements. Ray's buddies are entertainingly hard cases, and Durstin creates darkly humorous suspense as the reader wonders which of them is the suicide mentioned at the very start of the book--only to find out at the very end. (Apr.)