THE MUSIC OF YOUR LIFE: STORIES, by John Rowell, Simon & Schuster, 259 pages, $23.
John Rowell, a North Carolinan who writes theater criticism, has written his first novel, "The Music of Your Life," a collection of seven stories, all of them interesting, funny, optimistic and well-written. The overall focus of each story is the painfulness of not belonging.
Music, nostalgia and Southern small-town life are major ingredients in every story — and celebrity name-dropping is common. Sex and sexual identity figure prominently in most of the stories. The author is conscious of a need to show gay people are in most other ways typical of the rest of us, with many of the same problems.
The title story, "The Music of Your Life," is about a 10-year-old boy growing up in 1960s North Carolina. He is deeply buried in a fantasy world filled with the celebrities he reads about in movie magazines — and his favorite TV show is Lawrence Welk, whom he constantly emulates in everyday speech.
His mother is charmed by him while his father tries to keep his son at arm's length — "Time for bed, Sport." No one else understands his compulsion to focus on Peggy Lee, Doris Day and Rock Hudson instead of baseball.
In "The Mother of the Groom and I," a 33-year-old unmarried gay son, Hampton, now living in New York, returns to his home town of Mullens, N.C., to help his mother select a dress to wear at his younger brother's wedding. They hop from one clothing store to another, looking for a dress that is not purple (like that of the mother of the bride), but his mother pretty much hates everything. She keeps saying she may have to appear at the wedding in "a potato sack"
In "Who Loves You?" a young man who wants to be an actor meets Lucille Ball, who invites him to be a member of the cast of one of her TV shows, posing as a woman. He agrees because "You don't say no to Lucy." Besides, he is thrilled to be on the top-rated TV show in America — until he realizes that he cannot tell anyone about it.
In "Saviors," Burton, a church-choir director who has not yet come out of the closet, is faced with a problem. Jean Sloop, the church's self-appointed, obnoxious matchmaker, orchestrates a meeting at her home between him and her recently separated niece named Bitsy. When the three gather together, the matchmaker hogs the attention.
"Spectators in Love" focuses on a 5-year-old named Hunter, who is in love with Mary Poppins — both movie and soundtrack. The story jumps ahead to Hunter in the eighth grade, when his primary interest is Liza Minnelli and her new movie, "Cabaret." This time, he goes with his dad, who worries about some disturbing scenes.
In "Delegates," a group of gay men suffer love and loss during a summer-theater production.
And the final story, "Wildlife of Coastal Carolina," is more serious, about Talbert John Moss, who is clinically depressed, and who worries about the bad advice he has given a 6-year-old boy.
E-mail: dennis@desnews.com