The Parting Gift is a feverish and hypnotic epistolary novel, and a tantalizing literary treat. While wholly its own creation, readers may feel the influences of Patricia Highsmith (the sense of mounting dread) and Edmund White (the white-hot sexual encounters are salacious, surprising and erotic). An unnamed gay narrator who has been living with his straight college friend for the past four months has decided to move on and, as a parting gift, he's decided to write a letter explaining what brought him to his friend's doorstep.
The narrator drops out of grad school "under highly unpleasant circumstances" just months before graduation. Vacationing with friends in Tel Aviv, he meets Uzi, a roughhewn spice merchant, and immediately seduces him. "We were a mess," he writes, "a heaving, sweating, panting, quivering mess. And I was hooked." Uzi has two ex-wives and five kids (including an anorexic daughter and drug-selling son) but makes room in his home for his new romance. As their relationship builds, however, so does the narrator's mistrust. And this paranoia leads him down dark alleys. As he writes to his college friend: "Jealousy is a dangerous motive, and revenge its sharpest weapon."
Evan Fallenberg (When We Danced on Water) has crafted a haunting, emotionally satisfying and beautifully written story of obsessive love. Few readers will be able to stop reading this short novel before its surprising climax. The Parting Gift's vivid characters and their pyretic emotions make this an incredibly haunting novel. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant