Synopsis Volume 3: Slings and Arrows

In the Goldberg Variations finale, Jamie Goldberg grapples with existential uncertainty and self-discovery. He starts by rejecting the gay sexual underworld he had fallen into. In turn he throws himself into his studies. Upon learning that he has been cast as Horatio in a university production of Hamlet, he experiences a surge of elation. However, this euphoria is short-lived as he realizes that he will be sharing the stage with his bully schoolmate, Ben, who will be in the lead role of Hamlet. Jamie then throws himself into politics, only to unexpectedly clash with his activist mother who still doesn’t accept her own gay son. To pay for his education, he accepts a temporary job at a right-wing bank, which puts him at odds with his liberal friends, including his best friend and roommate. These attempts to evade his true self ultimately fail as he confronts the reality he has been desperately attempting to conceal and rationalize. Not unlike Hamlet, he is suddenly confronted with the undeniable truth and faces the ultimate challenge: how to accept what he finds so profoundly unacceptable.

Kirkus Review states:

In Arnowitz-Taylor’s novel, a young man struggles to come to grips with his past traumas and current, lurking hazards.

When readers first meet Jamie Goldberg, he’s at a major crossroads in his young life. As an out gay man in 1980s Detroit, where AIDS is spreading quickly, Jamie’s health would be a concern even if he didn’t spend his time with dangerous people. But by 1982, in this third installment in Arnowitz-Taylor’s The Goldberg Variations series, Jamie is coming off of a stretch of near-Herculean promiscuity, a period of time in which he’s chalked up so many lovers that he struggles to remember them all, doubly so thanks to the foggy haze of the copious amounts of alcohol and drugs he’d consumed over the same stretch of years. Now a theater student at the fictional Detroit State University, he’s just been cast as Horatio in Hamlet. While he’s initially flattered and thrilled, he learns quickly that he may have gotten the role simply because the director, Dwight Griss, expects sexual favors in return. This would be humiliating enough, but Jamie is put in an especially difficult position because he’s just sworn off the reckless amounts of sex and drugs that have massively complicated his life up to this point. As the weight of his childhood trauma becomes nearly unbearable, we learn that Jamie’s notions of love and affection have been affected by the sexual assault he experienced when he was a teenager. Were it not for an impromptu birthday phone call to his cousin or the presence of his roommate, who’s studying psychology, Jamie might not be able to utter even this backhanded affirmation: “I will be okay as long as no one kills me.”

Arnowitz-Taylor’s latest isn’t a traditional page-turner, but it more than manages to be continually gripping because of a looming sense of dread. Readers will feel the current of violence surrounding the protagonist early in this novel, whether he’s trying to behave safely or not. Threats weave through Jamie’s world: a violent ex-con, down-and-out exes, and the “scumbag” director of Hamlet, whose mistreatment of Jamie is its own kind of social and physical violence. Indeed, it often seems there is nowhere for Jamie to turn outside of his own apartment: “The LGBTQ community was invisible. There was no gay anything except dark, loud, and seedy bars.” Via humorous, approachable prose, Arnowitz-Taylor tells an intriguing story. The novel’s best asset, however, is Jamie himself, who’s a flawed narrator in a compelling and human way, which is not to say “damaged,” though perhaps he is that, too. He comes off like a young man desperate to belong to a community he fears has already rejected him, and as such, some of his decisions, which might otherwise turn off readers, become far more sympathetic. As Jamie struggles to understand his place in the world and the way it perceives him, readers will no doubt see something of their own young selves in him.

An excellent coming-of-age novel with an indelible lead.