James Magruder’s collection of linked stories follows two gay cousins, Tom and Elliott, from adolescence in the 1970s to adulthood in the early ’90s. With a rueful blend of comedy and tenderness, Magruder depicts their attempts to navigate the closet and the office and the lessons they learn about libidinous coworkers, résumé boosting, Italian suffixes, and frozen condoms. As Tom and Elliot search for trusting relationships while the AIDS crisis deepens, their paths diverge, leading Tom to a new sense of what matters most. Magruder is especially adept at rendering the moments that reveal unwritten codes of behavior to his characters, who have no way of learning them except through painful experience. Loss is sudden, the fallout portrayed with a powerful economy. In Tom and Elliott, readers come to recognize themselves, driven by the same absurd desires and unconscious impulses, subjected to the same fates. Magruder’s collection of linked short stories explores the lives of two gay cousins, Elliott and Tom, from preadolescence to adulthood in the 1970s, ’80s, and early ’90s. The geography of their lives takes them to college (Elliott to Cornell, Tom to Purdue), back home to Kansas, and then—more exotically—to New York and Paris. In stories that alternate between their points of view, we see them fall in and out of love (and lust), meet for the first time when they’re 25, become close, and, in the eighties, confront the specter of AIDS. Elliott, always the bolder of the two, tells his cousin, “The point of sex is danger . . . I just happen to believe that every intimate encounter should make room for the edge,” a notion that will take him to that very edge and then, perhaps, over. In the meantime, the more conservative Tom finds himself wondering if love is the only thing that matters in the end. These sometimes melancholy, character-driven stories invite reflection as they examine the intersection of love and sex in a gay milieu rooted in the time and place of their well-realized settings. --Michael Cart “There are few authors who write with as much sensitivity and tenderness as James Magruder; he has a way of finding something beautiful in the most heartbreaking moments . . . With sharp touches of humor, this is a marvel of a story.” — Kevin Wilson, author of The Family Fang “ Let Me See It overflows with honesty, hilarity, and heart. It’s impossible not to love this book, impossible to turn away from its brilliant prose, wicked humor, and utterly engaging characters.”— Jessica Anya Blau, author of The Wonder Bread Summer “Let Me See It exquisitely captures the texture of boyness and its evolution into the vast and bewildering landscape of adulthood. I loved being in the grasp of stories so alight with lust and danger and longing and loss, just as I loved Elliott and Tom—two remarkably complex and empathetic protagonists. From the first page, I fell headlong into their world and by the last, I was so very sad to leave it.” —Laura van den Berg, author of The Isle of Youth “James Magruder manages a neat trick of math: his tale oftwo cousins, over two decades, yields a portrait of one whole gay generation.Each trajectory builds its own drama, which makes their intersection all themore affecting. Broad and deep, witty and wistful, Let Me See It is a work of subtle strength.” --Michael Lowenthal, ThePaternity Test "James Magruder's sparkling, witty, and deeply movingLET ME SEE IT demonstrates his prodigious gifts as a storyteller and a prose wizard. Magruder perceives the world with a keen, subtle eye, yet writes about it with a grand, masterly flair." -- Aaron Hamburger, Faith for Beginners A tale of two gay cousins, Let Me See It is beautifully written and sharply observed. Often hilarious, it delivers an ending that continues to resonate.Be prepared to laugh out loud and get misty-eyed. Magruder has written that rare, wonderful beast: a comic gem with an emotional punch. -- BobSmith, Remembrance of Things I Forgot LET ME SEE ITis psychologically rich, erotic, disturbing, subversive, irreverent, and wittyas hell. Occasionally evocative of a (gay, or sometimes-gay) SteveAlmond, Magruder is among the ranks of our finest interrogators of contemporaryAmerican sexuality and identity. --Gina Frangello, A Lifein Men “By turns comic and melancholy in tone but always razor-sharp in its insights.” — Kirkus, 6/17/14 A follow-up to Magruder's debut novel Sugarless (2009), Let Me See It offers a vivid snapshot of love and loss during the initial AIDS era, as well as its overlooked legacy today. The book joins a spate of plays and films that are returning to that moment, including the revival and HBO film of Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart and Terrence McNally's recent Broadway play, Mothers and Sons. Whereas each of those works also looks at the effects of AIDS in New York during that era, Magruder's stories bring geographical expansiveness and the contemplation on the life preceding tha