In Memory of Angel Clare

Though he might have minced about it, Henry James would have been delighted by the situation presented here. Bram ( Hold Tight ) depicts a circle of friends of a dead filmmaker chafing at the responsibility of consoling his very young lover. With the exception of a middle-aged married couple, the characters are gay and out of the closet, and perhaps this accounts for the concern they feel, one year after the death of their friend, in trying to save the boy from his excessive, unresolved mourning. Bram's characters are candidly, truthfully observed; their alternative lifestyles clearly portrayed. In the end, however, it is the common humanity of these Manhattan sophisticates that triumphs quietly in a surprising, dramatic climax. James would have admired the wit and the sustained tone of this new comedy of manners, a very ``New York'' novel in sensibility and subject. (July)