The lost language of cranes

Description

David Leavitt's extraordinary first novel, now reissued in paperback, is a seminal work about family, sexual identity, home, and loss. Set in the 1980s against the backdrop of a swiftly gentrifying Manhattan, The Lost Language of Cranes tells the story of twenty-five-year-old Philip, who realizes he must come out to his parents after falling in love for the first time with a man. Philip's parents are facing their own crisis: pressure from developers and the loss of their longtime home. But the real threat to this family is Philip's father's own struggle with his latent homosexuality, realized only in his Sunday afternoon visits to gay porn theaters. Philip's admission to his parents and his father's hidden life provoke changes that forever alter the landscape of their worlds

First Sentence

EARLY ON A rainy Sunday afternoon in November a man was hurrying down Third Avenue, past closed and barred florist shops and newsstands, his hands stuffed into his pockets and his head bent against the wind.

Subjects

Genres

• Fiction

Other Editions

• The lost language of cranesDistributed by Random House1986-01-01
• The lost language of cranesBantam Books1987-01-01
• The lost language of cranesViking1987-01-01
• The lost language of cranesPenguin1987-01-01
• Lost Language of Cranes, ThePaperbackBantam1987-10-01
• Lost Language of Cranes (Penguin Fiction)PaperbackPenguin Putnam~trade1988-04-28