Stations

In a powerful testimony to two men's struggle with AIDS, Weiss writes of caring for his dying lover in a posthumous publication that coincides with the 20th anniversary of the emergence of AIDS. Written in the form of a short novel in which the names are changed (but presumably the events and the emotions are from life), the book charts the decline of Weiss's lover (dubbed Alexander in the memoir) from the first signs of the syndrome to his death in 1984 and the scattering of his ashes. Weiss, who died of AIDS in 1991, writes with unapologetic directness that can startle with its simplicity and pain.