A Friend of Dorothy’s by Richard Willett

I read an advanced reading copy (ARC) of A Friend of Dorothy’s by Richard Willett. It was a compelling journey, not a plot-driven or even character-driven story. It describes the times and drops us in media res into the start of the AIDS crisis in America. It is not emotionally torqued. It is storytelling not story-yelling.

This is a unique sort of novel, with an intimacy of narration that makes it feel like a memoir. At 250 pages it draws the reader in, gently but surely. It is a text that feels photorealistic, like immersive theatre. Since the time when Willett first drafted the book, he has become a playwright of some success and awards, and published short stories.

The general culture is familiar with the term of Friends of Dorothy, of AIDS memorial quilts, of marches, of bathrooms, of World AIDS Day on 1 December, and of the vast number of people lost to the first virulence of the mysterious disease. Maybe you know of Mary Jane Rathbun, popularly known as Brownie Mary. At San Francisco General Hospital, she became known for baking and distributing cannabis brownies to AIDS patients, one of the few things that could help with nausea and pain as the immune system was disrupted.

Even though it is not that long ago for people not there at the time, the edges are fuzzy. My edges are fuzzy. People weakened quickly and died.

This book goes into the daily in a respectful way. It isn’t crisis voyeurism. The focus of the book is that compassionate curiosity of the narrator Eric as he tries to puzzle out his life, his times. Some kind of cancer? He wonders with his cohort of the mid-80s. The mode of transmission was unknown. We discover with the young man Eric in what feels like real time.

Some kind of cancer? He wonders with his cohort of the mid-80s. The mode of transmission was unknown.

Eric is an ingenue of sorts, the fool of the play, not some authoritarian finger-waggler. He speaks carefully on the level, observes. He is gay but has never seen himself a cultural gay, not in the way Dale has. Eric is a wallflower drifting through life, working part time at a bookstore. He is pat of the periphery of the gay soiree that Dale surrounds himself with.

Eric finds himself pulled into the life of this coworker, Dale, trying to cover his missed shifts, then more as everyone else has backed away. Eric soon finds himself the primary caregiver to Dale, who was formerly ebullient and party central.

Eric mulls his way through what things mean. Why is the one Dale has turned to when there used to be a cloud of friends?

The HIV rash marks Dale and soon all sorts of opportunists diseases sweep in, and he’s not eating or sleeping but he’s defiant and full of verbal vigour. We get a real sense of the complexity of the inner life of both main characters. No one needs to be hero or villain. This flatness allows depth.

We get a real sense of the complexity of the inner life of both main characters. No one needs to be hero or villain.

It was one of the best reads of my 2025.

Richard Willett‘s short stories have been published in Christopher Street, Hawaii Review, American Writing, Karamu, and Oxalis, among others, as well as short-listed for New American Library’s Men on Men: Best New Gay Fiction, edited by David Bergman. His short play about AIDS Boys Will Be Boys was included in the anthology Art & Understanding: Literature from the First Twenty Years of A&U, and he is also the author of the plays Triptych, Random Harvest, The Flid Show, Tiny Bubbles, 9/10, A Terminal Event, and Grief at High Tide, presented off-off-Broadway and at theaters across the country. Honors include an Edward F. Albee Foundation Fellowship and a Tennessee Williams Scholarship, designation as a finalist for the Dramatists Guild National Fellows Program and the Sundance Labs, and listing twice in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Nicholl Top 50. He lives in West Hollywood, California.

Publisher: Magic Show Press (June 15, 2025)
Paperback 6″ x 8″.5″ | 248 pages
ISBN: 9798992339819

Pearl Pirie

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Pearl Pirie's latest is we astronauts (Pinhole Press, 2025). Pirie’s 4th poetry collection is footlights (Radiant Press, 2020). rain’s small gestures(Apt 9 Press, 2021) won the 2022 Nelson Ball Prize. www.pearlpirie.com and patreon.com/pearlpiriepoet