Quiet writing which is able to spike up out of nowhere and give you a dose of emotion.Grimsely gives us a quiet mixture of attraction, love, need for closeness, for belonging, family against almost unsurmountable odds, ill health, danger, different backgrounds, different finances, different relationship. And still they tried and went on.Throughout the book I saw parallels to every couples life regardless of gender. Those, who live or who lived an amount of time within a couple recognises the lov...

March 22 2010I can certainly relate to this novel, as I suspect many males in long term spousal relationships can do. I too had to choose between my spouse (of 30 years) and my parents. This book ends with such a choice made by Ford, leaving the future to the experience of the reader. It took about 5 years before my parents came around to accept us completely and now give Chris their love, always ask about him. Sometimes, I even think they like him better than me :-) He has become like an adopte...

4.5 stars "When will you know if you want to give up?"In answer, Ford knelt in front of Dan, laying his arms across Dan's lap and leaning his head into the center of Dan's chest. The contact shocked them both. "I could ask you the same thing. When will you know?" Very realistic and honest love story to which, I believe, everyone who’s ever been in a relationship can relate. The author throws many obstacles for Dan and Ford to overcome – completely different background, disease, homophobic and

Throwing the towel at 32%I bought this without reading the sample based only on great reviews.Why???? I don't know. But I do know I'll be getting my money back for this. Dan lay his hand on the door latch. The driver opened his door and got out. Dan opened his door and got out. The cold air chilled his face as he waited for the driver to open the trunk. The driver lifted the first of the bags and Ford reached for it; the driver looked at Dan, who said, “It’s all right.” **********************...

4.5 Stars. I finished this a while ago and for some reason I never found the way, or the words to review it. I hope I will review it later when I'm on my laptop. But for now know that this is beautiful in a strange and unique way. The melancholy and beauty of the writing, and the realness of the story and its characters is wonderful. It's a love story, but it's not your typical one. However it feels incredibly realistic, and it resonates with the reader (or it did with me, anyway).I'll be back l...

Comfort & Joy follows Ford and Dan as they embrace the challenges of their relationship. The holidays arrive and it becomes clear that meeting each other’s parents is a necessity in order to be happy, even if their parents can’t accept their happiness. Comfort & Joy is a sombre yet hopeful Christmas read about the meaning of family. 3.5

It is a love story. Wonderful, beautiful, forbidden, honest and very real. This book is very difficult to review for me. I have an impression that everything that I'll say about this novel and about the relationship between Ford McKinney and Dan Crell won't do justice neither the book, nor the MCs. It is probably the quietest love story I've ever read. And these contradictions between the two protagonists and their backgrounds, between the stillness and tenderness of telling, the soft flowing of...

Jumping back and forth in time, Comfort and Joy charts the development of the relationship between Ford McKinney, a young doctor from a rich and deeply conservative family, and Dan Crell, a hospital administrator with serious health issues and a poor, troubled childhood. The story follows them from first meeting through getting together, living all the ups and downs of a budding and gradually deepening relationship, to their first Christmas visiting their respective families together as a couple...

Since two of my Gr friends are reading this book right now, I think it's time for me to review this amazing novel.I read it a couple of years ago but it still has a special place in my heart. It's a wonderful love story between two men (a doctor raised by a homophobic rich family and a nurse with a severe health condition coming from a poor childhood)I think it's a very honest portrait of a gay relationship, with all the sparkling of a true love and all the downsides of the everyday life perfect...

A beautifully written, very touching and poignant story. I loved Dan and Ford. So very different, entangled in what seems like a hopeless relationship, they still manage to fight for their love. I liked their honesty, vulnerability, even doubts and desire to give up. It felt authentic. Like any other long-term relationship, facing different issues on a day-to-day basis. It's unavoidable, very often painful, but at the same time rewarding. I honestly don't know how much time together Dan and Ford...

Dave Malone, the best writing teacher I've ever had, once asked me to describe the difference between fiction and literature. I don't remember exactly how I answered, but I do remember that I was judged to be incorrect. According to Dave, the difference is simple: fiction makes statements; literature asks questions.The central question of Comfort and Joy is "Why do men stay together?" I have to say that I had a very negative, knee-jerk reaction to that question because, in the context of this gr...

What draws two people together? What makes them decide to be a couple? How do they overcome the barriers that divide them; the things they hate about each other in spite of their love?"Comfort & Joy" is a beautiful book in the tradition of Eudora Welty--a very southern story that nonetheless resonates across any such regional distinction. It is about two men, but the pieces of their stories could be assigned to any two people's lives. Grimsley fills the book with seemingly inconsequential minuti...

I am so so glad to have discovered Jim Grimsley. Comfort & Joy is an extraordinarily fascinating book. It is a love story between a pediatrician and an employee of the hospital's administration. In particular, family structures, coming out process, human interaction and dealing with drastic life events will be highlighted. And it's about the question of acceptance. Parents have certain plans for their offspring. What if nothing works the way the parents imagined it? Snobbery on the one hand, acc...

The author has sensitively explored many aspects of a gay relationship unapologetically. It is not a novel about thrills or chills but of profound emotions. The difficulties between Ford, a pediatrician accustomed to the trappings of ancestral wealth and luxury, and Dan, a hospital administrator from an economically weaker section of society, are laid bare. The agonies of introducing one's gay partner to each other's hostile parents are recounted in excruciating detail. The author does not shy a...

Jim Grimsley is one of my favorite authors. He has a way of cutting me to the emotional core yet making me feel somehow bettered for having read his books. Reflecting on his writing generally conjures in my mind terms like "raw", "gritty" and "disturbing", but never have I described one of his books as "lovely". This one is lovely. It is plain and simply a love story, not in the saccharin sense of a romance novel but in the authentic sense of what it takes for two imperfect people to make love w...

If you're looking for a pithy review, that's about plot and characters, look elsewhere.If you want to read a meandering review about how it reminded me of my teenaged best friend, and my marriage, then you're in the right place.I decided to read this because of a lot of people had been 'talking' about it, which then developed into a BR, but I didn't expect the book to affect me as much as it did.When I started reading it I cried, not those engineered ugly tears, but a quiet trickle, I was on my

Fiction. Full of flashbacks, red herrings, and the unsettling business of hemophilia, this novel jerked me around until I lost track of which Christmas it was and what occasion it marked for Dan and Ford's relationship. Complete with half-assed themes (Ford has a little boy inside him; Dan has two people inside him -- what? why? who?) and the gay equivalent of Cold Comfort Farm's famously vague "something nasty in the woodshed," this book left me feeling both cheated and disturbed. Something ba...

4 1/2 stars. At first the non-linear format through me off but in the end I think it served a purpose & made the story more enjoyable.

Well, this book waited patiently on my ipad for quite some time now. I even tried reading it several times and wasn't able to get further than two or three pages. Now obviously we matched! My mood and the story this book told, we fit perfectly. I loved the whole thing, first to last page. Wonderful writing, although from time to time I had difficulties to understand what was told - the current storyline or a flashback. But that never took long and was only a minor niggle.

This story tastes like real life -- sweet and sour. Both main characters Ford and Dan are far from perfect. It isn't easy for them to be together, quite the contrary. Life as a couple is often uncomfortable, frightening and confusing. But being separated is so much worse.Comfort and Joy is a beautiful story with some dark undertones. I loved it all. It gave me exactly what the title promises: comfort and joy. And it'll make a wonderful re-read!