Nights in Aruba

Andrew Holleran's follow-up to Dancer from the Dance, Nights in Aruba is a classic novel of love shared and love concealed told with wry humor and subtle lyricism.

Nights in Aruba, Andrew Holleran's second, more reflective novel, centers around the dual life that its protagonist, Paul, leads between his fast paced "out" life in New York City and his extended visits to aging parents in Florida. He cannot quite believe what his life has become: "I had arrived at middle age and realized I had made no progress, that the moment was past—just as I would look up from a book I was reading on a Saturday in summer and realize when I saw the clock that the last decent train to the beach had left already."

Years after accepting his sexuality after some electrifying time in the army and living on the Lower East Side, Paul is eventually bored by the hijinks of sex and drugs in the Manhattan disco scene.

His musings and development through the novel center around his coming to terms with his homosexuality, his Catholic upbringing in Aruba, and his relationship with his parents - a businesslike father, and a bored, commanding, unfulfilled mother.