E. Lynn Harris's blend of rich, romantic  storytelling and controversial contemporary issues like  race and bisexuality have found an enthusiastic and  diverse audience across America. Readers celebrate  the arrival in paperback of his second novel,   Just As I Am , which picks up where   Invisible Life left off,  introducing Harris's appealing and authentic characters to a  new set of joys, conflicts, and choices. Raymond,  a young black lawyer from the South, struggles to  come to terms with his sexuality and with the grim  reality of AIDS. Nicole, an aspiring  singer/actress, experiences frustration in both her career and  in her attempts to find a genuine love  relationship. Both characters share an eclectic group of  friends who challenge them, and the reader, to look at  themselves and the world around thern through  different eyes. By portraying Nicole's and Raymond's  joys, as well as their pain, Harris never ceases to  remind us that life, like love, is about  self-acceptance. In this vivid portrait of contemporary  black life, with all its pressures and the  complications of bisexuality, AIDS, and racism, Harris  confirms a faith in the power of love -- love of all  kinds -- to thrill and to heal, which will warm the  hearts of readers everywhere. From the Trade Paperback edition. Harris confronts several important issues head-on in this novel of a black American's coming out. Atlanta lawyer Raymond Tyler struggles with his sexual identity, openly dating women while seeking male liaisons and justifying his lifestyle under the guise of bisexuality. A year of crisis brings Raymond face to face with himself as he deals with Nicole, who loves him; Basil, who has a facade to maintain; Kyle, who is dying of AIDS; his parents, who don't understand; and Jared, his straight best friend. The execution is too pat, but superb character development and insight make this a powerful sequel to Invisible Life , which was privately printed in 1991 and is now being reissued by Anchor: Doubleday. Many gay readers will identify with the story, which often seems more truth than fiction. Recommended. - Thomas L. Kilpatrick, Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. The saga of buppy sports attorney Raymond and his almost-love, aspiring black actress-singer Nicole, combines the soap opera elements of spiritual and identity crises, sex, death, sexual assault, cheating hearts, and lots of ruefulness and flings them against the backdrop of Raymond's gay-bisexual lifestyle within the African American community. Despite its mega-chunks of daytime-TV dialogue unbroken by any narrative or description of the speakers; despite its characters' propensity to sigh and ponder the difficulties of life while enjoying barely credible, nearly effortless access to funds; and despite its unfortunate habit of interrupting the action, such as it is, for fly-on-the-wall peeks at the main characters' psychotherapy sessions, the long novel does have its saving qualities. For sandwiched, too infrequently, between layers of stilted conversation is its redeeming element--some freewheeling, black dialect that captures well the tones and nuances of feelings between longtime friends, onetime lovers, and anytime sex partners. Whitney Scott The stand-alone sequel to Harris's self-published first novel Invisible Life (1992), which Anchor is also reissuing next March. Both works are saccharine treatments of the lives, loves, and deaths (from AIDS) of middle-class blacks--straight, gay, and bisexual. The two leads, Raymond and Nicole, narrate alternate chapters. In the earlier novel, the pair's love affair was doomed by Ray's bisexuality. Now both are (temporarily) celibate. Lawyer Ray, in Atlanta, has the hots for his buddy Jared (a mystery man, sex- wise); actress Nicole, in New York, has an attentive admirer in doctor/Broadway investor Pierce, who's white and Jewish. When he proposes (on his knees) in a Manhattan restaurant, Nicole accepts, then feels guilty for not loving him enough just as Ray, down south, is feeling ``dirty and empty'' after having stood up fine- looking, upstanding Jared to have sex with fine-looking but messed- up pro-footballer Basil. Our leads are good people who pray a lot and spend time on the couch, but between them they can't generate a plot, so Harris fills the vacuum by having Ray's friend Kyle come down with AIDS. Nice-guy Ray flies to New York for the months-long deathbed vigil, while his nice-guy boss keeps him on salary and nice-guy Jared arranges an 11th-hour reunion between Kyle and his long-lost father. Kyle dies. Nicole listens to her heart, breaks off with Pierce, and falls in love with Jared (relax, he's as straight as they come) while Ray also finds true love with old frat brother Trent. Only when sassy Kyle is dishing the dirt with his ``girlfriends'' Nicole and Delaney does Harris's novel flicker into life, bringing momentary relief from a plastic world wher