Jim Feast’s Long Day, Counting Tomorrow

In LONG DAY, COUNTING TOMORROW, Jim Feast gives a panoramic view of the social chaos, community energy and despair during the height of the AIDS crisis. Many of the poet-activists in this novel face eminent death while dealing with a medical and political system compromised by money grubbing, corporate-fame seekers.  The characters try to sabotage institutions, detour their misguided efforts and uncover the truth. A suspicious acting doctor who owns a hospice for AIDS patients—that’s the mystery that drives the novel, but there is a far greater mystery here: Why are we dying?  An exceptional storyteller, Feast moves fluidly from one conversation to another, fracturing time and place while spinning forward with the energy of those who insist on living a vibrant activist life, even while facing early death. After the Gay Pride Parade, one of the characters reflects:  “The nebula. It looks like that. Like a great circle of interlocked elbows.”  This novel is funny, sad, ironic and absolutely a must read to understand where we have been and where we are now.