Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A young British pansexual with a penchant for chemical and physical excess stars in award-winning actor Cumming's (Cabaret, Eyes Wide Shut) zany debut. As his 30th birthday looms, Tommy grapples with both his desire to have a child and his fear of settling down. He also embarks on numerous benders ("I have coke spilling out of my left nostril, a ten-pound note jammed up my right"), while roommates Bobby, a gay lamp-shade designer, and Sadie, a mother-figure of sorts, plus lover Charlie and Charlie's eight-year-old son, try to help Tommy grow up. Cumming infuses the narrative with obscenities, puns, pop culture references and fairy tales, the latter appearing at crucial points in the plot as thinly veiled stories about Tommy himself. Cumming also gleefully overemploys the literary gimmick: there are lists of advice on anything from drinking to depression, flashbacks, jump cuts ("we're doing one of those time-jump things," Tommy notes), subtitles, interviews and direct appeals to the reader. Though at times insightful and clever ("Charlie belonged to that lucky, lucky group of normal people who are not waiting for their lives to start," Tommy says of his lover), the book often feels as hysterical and muddled as its narrator does. While Cumming explores plenty of graphic sexual escapades, bigger matters-such as Tommy's transformation from boy to man at the book's end-are left unexamined. At the core of this book is a charming personality-intelligent, frolicking, sensitive and sexual-but only rarely does it emerge from amid the extremes of story and style. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Frothy first novel by the Scottish stage and film actor heretofore best known for his Tony Award-winning role in the recent revival of Cabaret. The story is a first-person confession, of sorts, in which the eponymous Tommy, a late-twentysomething who vacillates between avoiding adulthood and desiring fatherhood, chats amiably with the reader about his versatile (i.e., bisexual) love life, rules for avoiding the sin of being a bore, and relationships-with jaded roommates Sadie and Bobby, his older boyfriend Charlie, and the latter's owlish, charming eight-year-old son Finn. Cumming's plot, such as it is, follows Tommy through a succession of one-night stands, even more orgiastic excesses during a trip to New York City with the photographer who employs and indulges him, a reunion with his gorgeous former girlfriend India, and a muted acceptance of the only lifestyle he's really suited, and inclined, to lead. The narrative is occasionally interrupted by interpolated "fairy tales" that underscore Tommy's experiences and noodlings with suffocating banalities (e.g., "There is so much joy out there to be had, and most people are bereft of it because they are simply scared of letting it in"). There are also numerous digressions on such topics as partying etiquette, bathroom decor, the mechanics of male urination, and Tommy's drug of choice: Ecstasy, the subject of repeated paeans to its pleasures and benefits. A few funny bits do crop up: notably, some ingeniously bitchy remarks about India's former German boyfriend Kurt, and the experience of "being given a lecture on the evils of drug taking by a furious woman wearing a crucifix, in the disabled toilet of Planet Hollywood." But such high points, so to speak, aren't enough to redeem Tommy's Tale from its larky, slapdash inconsequence. Alan Cumming is a marvelous actor.
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