patricia grossman

The year is 1995. Thirty-nine-year-old Brian Moss lives alone in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood, his survival in the city barely rising above the marginal. He’s in danger of becoming a fixture on his block, someone not registered by those around him. Brian hasn’t succeeded in his ambition of becoming an art historian, but neither has he fully forsaken it. He still thinks about his unfinished dissertation, but mostly at odd moments—on his way to the piers at dusk or to late-night clubs after work. Brian cherishes his independence, yet every now and then he recalls, with a shock of recognition, his father’s appellation for him, “Mr. Artiste, Mr. Overgrown Boy.” Over three seasons—autumn through spring—events conspire to show Brian that a richer life is within his grasp. Returning to his childhood home in the Midwest when his father has a stroke, Brian finds the scale of emotion between them weighted first one way, then the other. While there, he uncovers a surprising family secret that gives him a much-altered view of his past. And then, slowly, Brian enters into a relationship with a man who challenges his feelings about romantic love and disrupts his pattern of random late-night encounters. Brian Moss’s inner voice takes hold of the reader from the first page. Grossman’s rendering of his character is a tour de force. She places Brian firmly within his beloved city by balancing the harsher realities of urban life against the great aesthetic pleasures that can be drawn from it. As Brian’s life becomes illuminated within this set passage of time, so does the reader’s understanding of an ordinary, extraordinary man.