Brief, spoiler free review now that I'm done.

This is an immense book in which, at a certain level of discourse, "nothing happens." Eric Jeffers, at seventeen, meets his life partner Morgan "Shit" Haskell. They fall quickly in love and remain together for 70+ years. Nothing terribly dramatic happens to them in all those years.

...at another level of discourse it's one of the most moving love stories I've ever read. Eric and Shit have a relationship that I wouldn't want any part of. There's a great deal of explicit sex, between them and others (I'm trying to avoid spoilers in this little review), but none of it is for me, and indeed much of it would probably not be a turn-on for most gay guys. It is, as Shit constantly says, "nasty" ... and at times even <i>boring</i>.

...at yet another level of discourse it's the story of the next sixty years of American history, in which huge and dramatic events occur (offstage), technology advances greatly (and hardly affects our near-Luddite protagonists), and society changes almost unrecognizably (leaving Eric in his 80s as confused by the world around him as any old person can be and many are).

...and at still another level of discourse it's an extraordinarily finely observed chronicle of ordinary life. (As Eric observes late in the book, he doesn't have a story, he has a life.) 

I thought at first I was going to give up on it. By the time I came to the end, I was crying. 
 		 	   		  

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