Job's Year

Job's Year concentrates on a man who reaches a point in his life where he no longer accepts self-delusion or flattery. It is his time of truth, the time to reflect on his life disappointments with clear-eyed irony and scaled-down dreams. Moving from past to present, memories and dreams flood his mind as Oliver Jewitt comes face-to-face with the inadequacies of his life and the pressing problems of the present. He returns to his family home to support his elder sister, a celebrated artist, who is dying. In this small California town in the Sierra Madres foothills, he encounters ghosts of his youth, both places and people. Desperate to be an actor from his teens, he's eeked out a modest but now failing career as he struggles to keep his closest relationships. Fellow actors, agents, lovers and their families pepper his world with challenges, annoyances and little satisfaction. When he finally accepts that his younger lover of ten years is in love with Jewitt's modest celebrity but cares little for the man he is, he's ready for a new road. As the year progresses, more doors close, but new opportunities to make sane decisions baffle and block him. Jewitt perseveres, accepts defeat where necessary, and battles these ghosts as he seeks a safe place to become the man he's always dreamt he could be.The wise and mature novel of a writer at the peak of his craft, Job's Year moves with masterful swiftness and grace through the human mysteries of love, art, and death. It joins Backtrack and A Smile in His Lifetime, three non-detective novels that master stylist Joseph Hansen wrote in the 1980s, now reissued by ReQueered Tales. "Job's Year treads the fine line between faith and modern existentialism … a walk along the tight-ropes between madness and sanity … Hansen is at his best, moving from past to present, memories unlocked by a change of light, smell of perfume, feelings of love, lust, loneliness … [The plot and characters are] brought to life with grace, style, and subtle surety." - Paul Levine, Los Angeles Times"Taut, vivid, compassionate, strongly felt … turns the events of a man's difficult year into a story as page-turning as a detective story." - USA Today"Truly good books leave their readers changed … Job's Year may do that to you." - San Francisco Chronicle"One of the most impressive novels of the year … a triumphant, life-affirming work." - Portland Oregonian"An intelligent, compassionate and honest treatment of a decent human being who happens to be homosexual … Hansen writes sardonically and perceptively about the realities of his life, whether they involve a drunken con artist, a rich woman who knows she is being used but cannot resist it because 'he's so good in bed', and the one woman whom Oliver ever had a close personal relationship with … Hansen never uses the word 'gay' … He understands very well that being homosexual in our society is still not always the happiest condition in the world." - Publishers Weekly"Hansen is quite simply one of the best stylists writing today; his ability to capture the most mundane nuances of modern life, as well as the most complex emotional conflicts, is little short of astonishing." - Manifest