The bright lights, subway squeal, grime, and AIDS tragedy of New York in 1988 become the backdrop as a young man’s sensibility—formed by the complicated loves and demands of his three sisters—tests itself against the push-and-pull compulsions of an illicit love affair. As we follow John Martin through this story, from New Braunfels, Texas, to the Big Apple, it becomes our story too: a look at the complexities all of us carry from past into future, fumbling at self-knowledge, hungering for experience.
Albert Goldbarth, twice winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award
“Flawlessly crafted, original, and intimate. A haunting meditation on loss and desire, Stay with Me a Little Longer is a love letter to a gritty New York long surrendered to upscale coffee shops and apartment high rises, to the reckless passions of fading youth, to art and all its possibilities, and to beauty itself.”
Jennifer S. Davis, author of Our Former Lives in Art and Her Kind of Want