Steven Rowley

The celebrants: five college friends from Berkeley who used to be six until one unexpectedly dies.

“They went to bed exactly two weeks before graduation thinking they would live forever and woke up to the last real lesson that college would teach them: all that begins, ends” (23).

Taking that lesson to heart, the five remaining friends enter a pact where each can invoke their own funeral at any point in life—a low-point, a traumatic tipping point, a rebirth point. This one-time funeral will serve to function as a reserve parachute when the main parachute of life doesn’t deploy. When you’re plummeting to the hard earth, pull the reserve, call in the funeral, and your closest college friends will be there to remind you: “to live in the present, to live for yourself, … that [you] were never as alone as [you] thought” and to “leave nothing left unsaid” (288, 214).

The book unfolds in the sequential order that each person calls for their own funeral, and while the events that precipitate each funeral are melancholic moments, the funerals themselves are full of humor and tenderness. They’re really made up of all the ingredients of a good reunion with old friends: emotional purging and laugh-out-loud scenarios and enlightening therapy. In the same way, this read is like a reunion with an old friend and one I’d highly recommend reuniting with—you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll feel hopeful, even knowing that “all that begins, ends.”… (meer)

“Patrick had even hoped that he might perhaps learn from them. That they might know the path out and somehow light the way” (104).

This is one of those books that warms your heart while simultaneously ripping it out. It’s witty and savvy and full of emotion, balancing the drudgery of weighty grief and the oasis of elusive happiness.

Patrick, a semi-retired actor living an isolated life in Palm Springs, reluctantly agrees to take in his niece and nephew after his sister-in-law has passed away and his brother has checked himself into a drug rehab facility for 90 days. Patrick wants to continue living his arid lifestyle free from attachments and the risk of losing love—and loved ones (again). The summer learning from the kids and the kids learning from him —how to get out of the quicksand of grief… (meer)

I LOVE THIS BOOK! It's quick, witty, fun, brought me to tears, and is easy to read. The Guncle is the type of book I found myself reading slower as the pages lessened; I didn't want it to end.

Steven Rowley weaves a clever tale about GUP, Gay Uncle Patrick, once on TV, still reasonably recognizable, who has escaped the lights and glam of LA to leave a somewhat reclusive life in Palm Springs. After the death of his best friend/sister-in-law, his brother requests Patrick to care for his 6 and 9-year-old while he attends rehab.

Begrudgingly, due to fear of raising the children for 9-months, Patrick agrees and the hilarity begins.

The Guncle is rife with easy banter between the 40-something Guncle and the highly inquisitive, mourning children, and while doing his best to assist the kiddos with their grief, Patrick learns his own lessons about navigating grief.

The messages are clear throughout the book: Be who you are, let others be who they are, and do it all without judgment. Perhaps for me, The Guncle struck a chord because I hope for my son to have an opportunity to shine with his future nieces and nephews the way Patrick does for Maise and Grant.

Read this. You're welcome.… (meer)

I was not as enamored with this installment as I was with the first installment of this series? mini-series? I'm not sure what it is or is going to be!

While The Guncle was a book about growth, emotions, and having faith in oneself, I found this book to be one of selfishness. Although I can understand some of it on Maisies' side (her age gives her a tiny break from me), everyone else just seemed more worried about themselves and filled with deep introspection at all times.

The first book reminded me a lot of Auntie Mame: An Irreverent Escapade, and in my opinion, that is what made the book ideal. This book just got bogged down in all of the "poor me" garbage. Yes, we did have an interesting HEA, but I wish I hadn't had to be as depressed as I was to get to it.

I recommend this book, but not as wholeheartedly as I recommend the first one.

*ARC supplied by the publisher G.P. Putnam's Sons, the author, and Edelweiss. My thanks.… (meer)