The Very Heart of It: New York Diaries, 1983-1994

"I’ve loved Thomas Mallon’s writing ever since I reviewed Henry and Clara, his 1994 novel about the engaged couple sharing the Lincolns’ box at Ford’s Theatre on that fateful night in 1865. Throughout a career spanning 11 novels – most of them historical – Mallon has captured the tragic and absurd lurking in even the weightiest moments of the past. Turns out that in his diaries, Mallon was doing the same for his own life and times. This volume gathers entries from the years 1983 to 1994, when he’d recently come out and moved to New York, even as the AIDS epidemic raged."