Their love did not falter while being confronted with an evil enemy.

Horwitz dies at the end of this work, and Monette lived until 1995 – both dying of AIDS-related complications. They went from vacationing in Greece to making regular stays at the hospital over 19 months. Managing HIV/AIDS took over this couple’s lives. That defiant decency is the brilliance of this work. Monette beautifully voices his love using floral, expressive language that is expected among articulate heterosexuals… only Monette did so in an America and in a world that did not accept his humanity as fully as they do now. In today’s world of marriage equality, works like this demonstrate the deep value of homosexual relationships. Instead, it is a love story as passionate and profound as any written down in human language. The secret is that this book is not a story of a disease. This work is the first personal memoir of someone with AIDS. Both were educated at Ivy League schools. Professionally, Horwitz was a lawyer and a lover of literature Monette was a writer.

In a world before triple-drug therapy (HAART) was enacted and allowed individuals to live a normal lifespan with HIV, Monette and his lover Roger Horwitz contracted HIV, which ineluctably progressed into AIDS. “Write about him Paul… That’s what you have to do.” This ebook features an illustrated biography of Paul Monette including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the Paul Monette papers of the UCLA Library Special Collections. Written with fierce honesty and heartwarming tenderness, this book is part love story, part testimony, and part requiem. A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Borrowed Time was one of the first memoirs to deal candidly with AIDS and is as moving and relevant now as it was more than twenty-five years ago. This personal account of the early days of the AIDS crisis tells the story of love in the face of death. At a time when the medical community was just beginning to understand this mysterious and virulent disease, Monette and others like him were coming to terms with unfathomable loss. Borrowed Time traces this love story from start to tragic finish. In 1986, Roger died of complications from AIDS. In 1974, Paul Monette met Roger Horwitz, the man with whom he would share more than a decade of his life. 'An eloquent testimonial to the power of love and the devastation of loss' from the National Book Award-winning author of Becoming a Man ( Publishers Weekly).

Borrowed Time by Paul Monette