Fragile Circle

Senak, best known as one of the authors of HIV, AIDS and the Law, was a lawyer who became part of the AIDS community by drawing up wills for the dying and who was later involved in such prominent AIDS organizations as New York's Gay Men's Health Crisis and AIDS Project Los Angeles. In this memoir of the AIDS epidemic from it's beginnings in 1981 to the introduction of protease inhibitors in 1995, he relays his own experiences with AIDS, from facing dying men daily, to losing his partner to AIDS, to his own painstaking decision to finally take an HIV test. Combining personal experience with a clinical documentation of the epidemic's growth, Senak at once conveys the broad, social implications of AIDS and its impact on individuals whose lives it consumes. Senak has a broad knowledge and a close vantage point, but those advantages are somewhat undermined by his clumsy writing style and the unfortunately flat portraits of his friends and colleagues (interestingly, the most lively person in the book is the late actor Brad Davis, who befriended Senak when Davis first tested positive for HIV). (June)