The Guncle

Patrick’s exodus from Hollywood four years prior is purportedly a temporary retreat. However, as Patrick settles into desert life with all the amenities his wealth can buy, temporary becomes permanent. Patrick isolates himself from the outside world—from his family, his career, and from any romantic partnerships—because he is still so wounded by Joe’s death that even ten years later, he cannot think about his grief. He makes a few new friends, but he is careful not to let his old life intersect with his safe new one. In fact, his neighbor John doesn’t even know Joe’s name, referring to him simply as “The one you lost” (306).

For Patrick, this cocoon is a strategy for dealing with many tragedies surrounding Joe’s death. Besides the sheer awful randomness of the car accident—Joe was killed by a drunk driver—Patrick mourns the fact that he and Joe never got a chance to have a family. Joe died just a few years before gay marriage was legalized, so he and Patrick never really considered the possibility of adoption. Patrick is also still deeply scarred by the homophobia of Joe’s family of origin, who swooped into the hospital and refused to acknowledge Patrick’s relationship to Joe or allow him access to his partner’s deathbed. Finally, the even exposed Patrick to the latent homophobia of his own family, as his sister Clara dismissed his grief for not being about an actual spouse. Rather than dealing with the multiple layers of pain, Patrick does his best to avoid and ignore. This works on the surface, but as soon as another tragedy strikes—his friend and sister-in-law Sara’s death—Patrick realizes that he needs to actually process his many kinds of grief to be an effective role model for Sara’s kids.

As Patrick once more connects with life, he finds hope in a variety of ways: He reengages with his family, becoming a parental figure for Grant and Maisie; he strikes up a romantic connection to Emory, who tells Patrick that, as a gay man, he has a duty to overcome his sadness; and he finds new professional creativity in TV and theater work. The summer with his niece and nephew is a wake-up call that he must rejoin the world.

The novel makes an emphatically sympathetic case for wider acceptance of nontraditional families by showing readers a variety of household arrangements that feature loving, empathetic, deeply connected people that we could easily imagine as parents. The novel’s main plot revolves around a single gay man raising two children. However, what makes this unit untraditional is not Patrick’s sexual orientation, but his complete lack of parenting experience. The novel argues that Patrick’s naiveté is actually a plus: Without parenting tricks to fall back on, he must guide Maisie and Grant through their grief for their mother’s death by relying on empathy, connection, and by modeling his own grieving process. Although Patrick often worries about his suitability for the task, an elderly couple even leaves him a note complimenting him on handling Maisie’s angry meltdown like all good parents should. Patrick’s ability to immerse himself in the kids’ experience makes readers regret that he and his dead partner Joe never got the chance to have a family of their own.

More nonconformist is the lifestyle of Patrick’s neighbors—three men in a long-term, stable, committed relationship. This throuple, who calls themselves JED, bemoans the fact that, as much as they all love children and wish for a family of their own, “No one’s is going to give us a kid. No agency is going to work with us” (76). However, despite the stigma attached to being in a polyamorous unit, no reliable evidence exists to suggest that children raised in nontraditional households with loving and committed caregivers suffer are in any way worse off than children raised by traditional heterosexual couples. When we see the care with which JED, and John in particular, approach Patrick and the kids, we see that they are clearly just as well-suited to be parents as any other well-adjusted adults.

To cement the idea that heteronormative couples do not necessarily have what it takes to parent successfully, Rowley presents two contrasting examples. First are Patrick’s brother Greg and his wife Sara. It turns out that even before Sara’s illness and death, Greg develops a substance use disorder. When Sara dies, rather than being there for his children during an incredibly vulnerable time, Greg them to go into rehab for three months, assuming that Patrick and the kids will bond over their shared grief and help each other heal. The novel doesn’t address Greg’s abandonment of his parental responsibilities too much—but it is a striking part of the plot. Another example of heterosexual dysfunction is Patrick’s sister Clara, who is judgmental and dismissive of Patrick’s chances with the kids because of her seemingly stable home life. However, as we learn, Clara is actually part of what used to be considered an untraditional family—she is a stepparent to her children—whose marriage is falling apart so dramatically that she might lose access to her kids altogether.

The novel argues that both traditional and non-traditional families face successes and challenges. What matters isn’t how a family is structured, but how much connection and empathy parents have with their children.