Dust Devil on a Quiet Street

Decades of a troubled and magical life in New York are described in this fascinating fictionalized memoir. Adapting previously published stories, Bowes creates an alternate version of himself, inhabiting a world where magic might or might not be real. Ghosts appear and disappear, a runaway kills with his mind, a Lovecraftian adept returns to a deadly building to destroy an old tome, and Bowes lurks on the periphery, sometimes participating in the supernatural and sometimes only briefly touching it through others. Woven in are decades of queer New York experience, from a doomed love triangle and the Stonewall Riots through the AIDS epidemic and into a modern, more accepting, less raucous city. There is no overarching plot, but the vignettes are powerful, and Bowes the character comes across as a very real individual, surrounding himself with a host of memorable and eclectic people. Bowes the author depicts a New York at once beautiful and terrible, dangerous and glorious, where mundane life is only one step away from the supernatural. (July)