Brian Malloy's novel, "After Francesco," is a moving and thought-provoking exploration of love, loss, and the complexities of grief. Through its authentic characters and raw emotional storytelling, the book offers a heartfelt and unflinching look at the aftermath of a devastating loss.

The story centers around the protagonist, Mike, who is struggling to come to terms with the tragic loss of his partner, Francesco, to AIDS. Set in the early 1990s, the novel provides a poignant glimpse into a time when the AIDS epidemic was at its height, and the societal attitudes surrounding it were vastly different from today. Mike's journey is not only about grieving his partner but also navigating a world that often lacks empathy and understanding.

Malloy's writing is deeply evocative, with a keen eye for detail that allows the reader to immerse themselves in the emotional landscape of the characters. He captures the essence of grief, love, and the human condition with a powerful and unflinching voice that lingers in the mind long after the book is closed.

The characters in "After Francesco" are brilliantly fleshed out, each dealing with their own struggles and heartaches. Mike is a profoundly relatable protagonist, and his journey is one of healing, self-discovery, and resilience. The secondary characters are equally well-drawn, adding depth and authenticity to the narrative.

The novel doesn't shy away from the harsh realities of grief, depicting the anger, confusion, and moments of despair that are an integral part of the grieving process. It also paints a vivid picture of the challenges faced by the LGBTQ+ community during the AIDS crisis, shedding light on a pivotal period in history.

While "After Francesco" is an emotionally resonant and beautifully written novel, some readers might find the pacing to be slow at times, particularly during the sections that delve deeply into the characters' emotional states. Additionally, the heavy themes of loss and grief may make it a challenging read for those who prefer lighter, more upbeat stories.

In conclusion, "After Francesco" by Brian Malloy is a powerful and poignant exploration of grief and the enduring nature of love. It's a novel that delves into the deepest corners of the human heart, offering an unvarnished portrayal of the complexities of loss. With its authentic characters and evocative prose, this book is a must-read for those seeking a moving and thought-provoking literary experience.

We aren't that far from the AIDS crisis and I was so glad to read such a gorgeous book about such a horrendous time. Very well written.

This entire story moved me to tears from beginning to end. It was raw and emotional and will tug on your heartstrings. This story follows Kevin 2 years after his partner Frankie dies of Aids in 1988, and Kevin's journey to attempt to heal and move on. I did not want to put this book down. I experienced a variety of emotional feelings throughout this story. There were also a couple of life lessons within the story.

I received a copy of the book via NetGalley and am voluntarily leaving an honest review.

I will preface by sharing that I had no idea there was a prequel to this book so After Francesco was my first experience with the main characters of this book.

After Francesco is a haunting novel about the height of the AIDS epidemic and the manner in which it wiped out the gay male population in the late 80's and early 90's. It was written during the start of a different modern pandemic, which creates a juxtaposition of the way that gay men were treated as lepers and the way we have handled this epidemic.

This book was emotionally taxing, and it was absolutely necessary. This history has been all but forgotten by so many, but we are missing many of our LGBT elders to this disease. The terror and the grief are so apparent in Malloy's writing. I really enjoyed the book and would recommend to all.

Thanks to NetGalley, Brian Malloy and Kensington Books for an eARC of this book in exchange for my fair and unbiased opinion.

This is an important and heartbreaking story about the impact of the AIDS impact. It focuses on Kevin Doyle who, at 28 years old, lost his partner, Francesco, to AIDS two years before. Since then, he has continued to grieve while all around him, his friends and community are decimated by AIDS. When he seems to hit rock bottom, his friends convince him to move back to Minnesota to live with an aunt and see if he can rebuild his life. The book then explores his attempts to do with the support of his aunt and old and new friends, while the impacts of AIDS and how his immediate circle and the broader world react to it continue to exert a powerful impact on his life.

This was a terrific and timely book. Very highly recommended.

After Francesco is a heartbreaking story that centers on Kevin Doyle, a gay 28-year-old man living in NYC amid the AIDS epidemic, and the blinding loss he suffers from the death of his loved ones, including his partner Francesco, because of the virus. This book is saturated with grief. Kevin's whole world is filled to the brim with utter heartache and longing for Frankie and the life they couldn't live, patched with glimpses of healing and dreamy nostalgia for the past and a stolen future. While he doesn't shy away from detailing the steady, deadly toll that AIDS takes on the body, Kevin spends equal time celebrating and reminiscing the love and friendship he finds in his relationship with his friends, both the alive and departed, gay and straight.

Hailing from the Midwest where he spent his coming-of-age years closeted, Kevin finds a nook that he can feel at home in the center of Alphabet City, a neighborhood bordering the edge of East Village that in the 80s, looked vastly different from the gentrified conditions of today. It almost feels surreal to read about gay characters in New York daydreaming about a day they could get married. Or how even in a city that's known for its liberal residents, some folks were hesitant to display love in public because gay bashing was incredibly more prevalent and covered up back then. It's a disquieting reminder that progress didn't come without a price and that even the progress that America and other select Western countries did realize is just the start of an uphill battle.

One aspect of this story that stuck with me was how big of a role touching played in Kevin's healing. In a time where there is so much misinformation and ignorance about HIV/AIDS, so much stigma around even being around and making contact with patients with AIDS, touching serves as an act of resistance. On particularly tough and lonely nights, Kevin and Live Eddie cuddle with each other, saying that holding onto each other is the "healthiest thing [they] can do."

There is so much beauty and sadness in these pages. Recommend if you're up for the waves of emotions this book will take you through!

I don’t like trigger warnings, nor do I normally give them myself. But this time, I prefer to tell you that this is not a book for the faint of heart, the romantically inclined who hate reality to intrude in their reads, or those who only long to get hold of some light distraction. Readers who like their books with a bit more depth, authenticity, historicity, and a healthy dose of humbling emotions, however, I invite you to grab a copy of ‘After Francesco’. Don’t be afraid, it’s not dark and gloomy, it comes with quite a lot of humor, rays of bright sunlight, and an overall feeling that there’s nothing more powerful than love, life, and hope.

The novel is set at the end of the 1980s, partly in New York, partly in Minneapolis, and tells the story of young Kevin Doyle. The book starts with a first emotional bang: a funeral. One of Kevin’s friends—nicknamed with black humor ‘Dead Eddie’ to distinguish him from his surviving lover, ‘Live Eddie’—has just died from AIDS at not yet twenty-eight years. Kevin, the reader soon finds out, is rather surviving than living, too. His own lover Francesco has fallen victim to the same disease two years before the intrigue of the novel starts, and Kevin’s grief is still so strong and all-encompassing that he isn’t capable of doing much. He more or less goes through the motions of his unfulfilling daytime job, meets up with his friends Laurie and Toshiro, visits Live Eddie as often as he can (this Eddie is sick, too), and attends a seemingly endless stream of funerals. The rest of the time, he just sits in the flat he shared with Francesco and drinks himself into oblivion.

Or to death. Maybe that’s what he’s wishing for. But Laurie, whom he has known since his Minnesota childhood, is the one who finally reacts. When she has to drive him to the ER once too often because he’s in an alcohol-induced half coma, she tells him that either he gets his act together or he’s on his own from now on. At that point, Kevin has lost his job and is about to lose his flat, too. That’s why he returns to Minneapolis to live with his Irish aunt Nora, a strong, stubborn, very religious but caring woman, who forces him to give up the booze and attend the meetings of a self-help group for AIDS victims and their relatives. Little by little, Kevin begins to see life differently. He realizes that in face of the US government’s deliberate ignorance of the epidemic, he must join forces with others who fight for public and official awareness if he doesn’t want to see yet more people die a horrible death.

I admit I couldn’t read the novel in one go. It was just too emotional an experience for me, so I took it in small steps, chapter after chapter. For a fast reader like me, it was almost a first—a month to finish a mere 304 pages. Sometimes, I could hardly make out the words on my e-reader screen because I was silently weeping, much to my lover’s bewilderment. But I can tell you, this was an amazing journey. For one, Brian Malloy revisits a not so remote era that devastated the gay community and plunged it into mourning like no other era before. I’ve always felt it necessary, almost mandatory, to know everything about our history, namely the recent struggles that have brought us to where we stand today, and this book was a powerful reminder of what happened when I was a teenager, very much in the closet yet already appalled by the AIDS crisis so many people and so many governments didn’t want to acknowledge, chiefly the US administrations of that time.

This point comes across in a very poignant way—how ideology, be it religious, be it political, can cause the deaths of millions of people simply because those in power believe their lives are of less value. Alas, this still seems to be true where AIDS is concerned. Reminder: how long did it take the scientific community to find a vaccine against the current epidemic? Compare it to the first reports of the HIV virus (early 80s) and the existence of a cure today, almost forty (!) years later. Alright, we have combination therapy (which it took almost a decade to come up with; just saying), but still no vaccine in sight. That fact gives cause for pause, right?

What is also very poignant in this novel are the stages of grief Kevin goes through. His story can almost be read as a bookcase of the Kübler-Ross model (after Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, a Swiss-American psychiatrist) where a mourning person goes successively, sometimes even simultaneously through denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I could witness all these in ‘After Francesco’. As Brian Malloy’s writing is straight, clean, clear-cut, and powerful, the read really turned out a roller coaster of emotions for me, because I didn’t read about Kevin—I was Kevin, 304 pages long. I not only discovered a story, I not only plunged into someone else’s truth, I also got to know an excellent writer. How the novel is constructed, how the chapters and scenes are cut, how the characters are shown in their different lives, from Kevin to his best friend Laurie or her Japanese lover Toshito, is really masterfully done. Even the secondary characters have that ring of authenticity to them that, in my book, makes any novel great and any read a potent experience. Just imagine—I received a very early ARC, so there were quite a lot of typos, and I didn’t care! Those who know me and my getting miffed even with misplaced commas are aware that that is worth mentioning.

As I said at the beginning, this is a truly amazing book that gripped me from page one and didn;t leave me indifferent. It certainly has made it immediately onto my list of favorite reads, and I highly and sincerely recommend it.

Moving, sad: resonated strongly with me😪

I loved Brian Malloy's book!

I recall those days in the 80's when AIDS first got grudging recognition as the deaths piled up. This book brought memories back, of colleagues frantically hiding their orientation and some losing their battle against the disease. So, Malloy's story about Kevin trying to cope with the death of his partner and friends strongly resonated with me. It's a sad tale but how could it not be and remain true to the subject?

The story has lots of hardship and Kevin's gallows humor but there are moments of love, hope and friendship as well. Reading After Francesco was an emotional experience and well worth the time. This era should not be forgotten.

Thanks to Kensington Books and NetGalley for providing a complimentary advance copy of the book; this is my voluntary and honest opinion.

This is a terrific emotional read about a man faced with living after losing so much. Kevin's partner Frankie was his world and his death from AIDs throws him into a spiral. AIDS ripped through NYC in the 1980s and, sadly, Malloy has captured the terror and horror of that period. Kevin finally finds himself back at his Aunt Nora's home in Minneapolis where he heals, a bit, but retains his anger. This is so much about grief, anger, and finding a way to keep going. While it's horribly sad, it's also got some funny spots (there are a few great lines). Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Great read.

Read if you: Want a deeply moving, at times painful, and ultimately hopeful story about a man struggling with the AIDS death of his partner.

This can be rather difficult at times to read--the pain and trauma is so acute--but it is definitely worth it. The horror of AIDS--as well as the stigma--is perfectly captured.

Librarians/booksellers: There aren't many historical fiction stories about AIDS written by an author who experienced that era firsthand. Strongly recommended.

Many thanks to Kensington Books and NetGalley for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.

I couldn't get through Brian Malloy's After Francesco.
The subject matter has me desperately wanting to read this story.
But I struggled with the writing style.
Sorry.