Back To The Bushless

Everyone I know, and whose taste I trust, has been raving about "Remembrance Of Things I Forgot," Bob Smith's novel. So I was super excited to start reading it. The premise was interesting enough: a Middle-aged gay man travels back to 1986 and tries to change history. His main goal was to stop George W Bush from becoming president, because his boyfriend of the future becomes a Log Cabin Republican, and it has strained their relationship. Hilarious enough, and the novel starts out very well, presenting a narrator who is witty and erudite. And then he travels back in time, and then...I start to lose interest in the novel. I try very hard to "understand" and "sympathize" but I found the narrator too shallow and maybe I was looking - and expecting - a different kind of novel than the one I was reading. I know that if I had travel back in time I would visit my old life quite differently than what he did. For example, he talks about friends who have died from AIDS but he never contacts them. Then he tries to interact with the younger version of himself, and even tries to cruise that person, which I thought was over all very creepy. And I just didn't understand the energy spent in dealing with Cheney and Bush then, when I would have gone to places I have missed and people I have lost. I guess I was looking at things in a more romanticized angle, and this book leaned more in the whimsical, science fiction kind of story. Smith writes well, and there were several jokes and one-liners that landed, but all in all, I was just not into the book. I wanted to love it but just barely liked it. And I kind of hate myself for that. 

BC-7