Steve Sorrentino, author of Luncheonette: A Memoir. Our hero learns that when life hands you eggs, you make an omelette, not your father's porkroll-egg-and-cheese sandwich.

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See also ReadOut Shorts: Sour Puss by Rita Mae Brown & Sneaky Pie Brown, The Days of Good Looks by Cheryl Clarke.

What a guy Steven Sorrentino is. The role of caregiver to aging parents often falls on gay children whose siblings cite their own families as the reason the gay child is best situated to move home and heed the call of family duty. In Sorrentino's case, he was only 24 when his father's stroke on Christmas Eve 1980 stalled his tentative steps out of the closet with dreams of finding love and stardom on Broadway. He had barely begun to sow his wild oats, and to try and make good on the promise he had shown as Tevye in a high school production of Fiddler on the Roof, much less to discover the gay man inside of him in all its potent courage and glory.

Luncheonette: A Memoir (ReganBooks, a division of HarperCollins) is Sorrentino's valentine to his dad, who bounces back to embrace his new life in a wheelchair while Sorrentino takes over his luncheonette in their small hometown of West Long Branch, New Jersey. Sorrentino sublimates his own yearnings to hold things together ("If I couldn't save the man, maybe I could save his luncheonette," he reasons). After all, this angel of a man is the guy who taught Sorrentino an appreciation for old-school Broadway musicals and gave him permission and encouragement to follow his dreams.

The neighborhood eatery boasts a frustrating menu of local eccentrics, and the claustrophobic universe of porkroll-egg-and-cheese sandwiches (a New Jersey staple my boss in Manhattan calls a "hungryman") comes across all too vividly to the reader. While Sorrentino paints his father as a god among men, he smears the cast of caricatures at the luncheonette as hellions beyond relief. By the time our narrator starts thinking about suicide, it almost seems like a reasonable solution. Not only has he left behind a hungry would-be friend and lover in New York, but the closest thing to romance he finds in West Long Branch is the unrequited lust for a Neanderthal delivery man that he shares with a widowed waitress who picks up on her boss's attraction to men. Even when Sorrentino dares to visit a gay bar not far away, who should he hook up with but a married man more interested in his wife and kids than building a life with Sorrentino. This fella can't win for losing.

Ultimately, the nightmare ends with our hero returning to New York City with lessons learned from the luncheonette and, more importantly, a big lesson learned from his father--basically that when life hands you eggs, you make an omelette, not your father's porkroll-egg-and-cheese sandwich.

Sorrentino discovers that "true wisdom is parceled out into short orders, coming from the most surprising places, at the most unexpected times." For him, the journey to that revelation was stultifying, but perhaps his book will show readers that it's crucial to balance family loyalty with the pursuit of one's own happiness.

Donalevan Maines reviewed Yesterday Will Make You Cry (W.W. Norton) in OutSmart 's February issue.
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Sour Puss
by Rita Mae Brown & Sneaky Pie Brown
Bantam Books Hardcover (www.randomhouse.com)

Halleluiah, the gang is back! Enter the world of Crozet, where everyone sees the humor in animal antics at their person's wedding. Town favorites Harry and Fair's newly wedded bliss is interrupted when a prominent visitor's corpse is found in a local field. Harry's animal companions (Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, Tucker, and their wild friends) let the poor, senseless humans think they solved the crime. As always, this Mrs. Murphy mystery is among the very best of the cozy cat genre. Set against the backdrop of Virginia's emerging wine industry, Sour Puss is a delightful way to spend an afternoon with old friends. -- Review: Angel Curtis

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The Days of Good Looks
by Cheryl Clarke
Carroll & Graf (www.carrollandgraf.com)

Cheryl Clarke is one of the few chroniclers of my times who always tells the truth. A leading thinker in the black, feminist, and lesbian movements, Clarke's essays inflamed the mind as her poetry set hearts afire. This new volume has it all--Clarke's previous poetry (long out of print), her inspired essays (difficult to find), and her first new poetry in 10 years. The Days of Good Looks continues to tell the truth, reminds me of all we went through, and makes it very clear that "older" doesn't mean out of the game. This one is a must read. -- Review: A.C.