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"No one has ever written a funnier "coming out" novel than Robert Rodi. Here the bedeviling and bedeviled author of Fag Hag mixes bedroom and boardroom farce in the deliciously mordant story of Lionel Frank - a Chicago ad man who desperately hides his homosexuality from his co-workers and clients, like All-Pro Power Tools." "Lionel is a hilariously unlikely hero. Devoting his days to working among homophobic he-men and his nights to dialing 1-900-BOY-TOYZ, he's achieved a fragile closet equilibrium - until Donna, the office lesbian, catches him ogling a male stripper at a notorious gay dance club." "From then on, it's open season on Lionel's reputation. And each time he tries to quell dangerous speculation by presenting himself as happily hetero, he manages to stumble ever more outrageously into the throes of gay lust - culminating in an extended crush on a wild-eyed Transylvanian anarchist." "Things come to a head when Lionel is invited to a week-long couples-only getaway at a Wisconsin cabin with his bosses and their wives. His neighbor, the Latina bombshell Yolanda Reynoso, agrees to go along as his cover, largely to get away from her spear-carrying men's-movement boyfriend. But as twilight falls in the northern forest and the call of the loon carries across the lake, Lionel finds himself careening toward both destiny and disaster - and learns the hard way that coming out may literally be a matter of life and death." "In Closet Case, Rodi deftly reveals the authentic pain of being afraid to be gay in a homophobic world, yet he looks back with laughter, not anger. Readers who are themselves in the closet will find Lionel's journey a cathartic experience; Rodi shows that at the journey's end lie serenity, self-acceptance, and maybe even true love. Closet Case is that rarest of novels: one both riotously funny and wonderfully humane."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved… (more)
User reviews
He's been subtly flirting with Tracy, one of the secretaries in his office, to keep up the appearance of heterosexuality and decides she should be the one to attend the dinner with him. Things seem to be going well as the date of the dinner quickly approaches, until during one lunch break, Lionel and Tracy are walking back to the office when Lionel spies his best friend and hairdresser coming down the street. Not wanting him and Tracy to meet and to potentially out him, he quickly insinuates himself in a protest outside the Romanian embassy and finds himself falling hard for one of the protestors -- a handsome doctor-in-training named Emil.
And now, every attempt to show how hetero he is at the office and to his bosses winds up backfiring as his feelings for Emil cloud his judgement. Lionel winds up digging himself a deeper hole with only one possible way to make a happy ending for himself.
Maybe if I had read this when the book was first published over 10 years ago, I might have found Lionel's constant circumstances humorous. Instead, I found myself reading through the overly-stereotyped characters and somewhat believable situations only half-heartedly. I blame it on Lionel, whom I could never bring myself to like. He's a jerk, plain and simple, and that turned me off immediately. The secondary characters, though, make up for him: Yolanda, the curvacious Latina with her head stuck in sci-fi novels; Emil, the doctor-in-training cum protestor; Toné, his friend and hairdresser; his Aunt Lola, who has created a line of greetings cards specific to the gay community; and the bosses of his agency (along with their wives).
As for the situations into which Lionel puts everyone, they're just okay -- save the final sequence at a cabin in Wisconsin. That I actually enjoyed -- the in-fighting, the kidnapping, the fast-paced action.
But as a whole, "Closet Case" wasn't as funny as I expected based on the book's blurbers. It was simply okay.