The Rise and Fall of the Yellow House Paperback – August 29, 2015

There’s a moment in John Treat’s novel, The Rise and Fall of the Yellow House, when one of the characters, Jeff, looks inside the medicine cabinet of a friend who is suffering from AIDS and stares at the collection of medicine bottles:“He stood there and thought: I could read the labels, but I won’t understand what these drugs are for. But I do understand how my world and Raul’s are connected. These drugs aren’t just his. They’re all of ours.”Up to this moment, in this dark and poignant novel, we as the reader know what’s coming, but for Jeff, who already is fearful and paranoid of the future that lies in front of him, it’s when the epidemic really hits home for Jeff. It is one of the novel’s more powerful and defining moments that also reminds us of the sadness and tragedy this illness will wreak.The novel follows the lives of Henry and Jeff who end up living together in a house in Seattle which is being used for therapy sessions for various addicts. Their lives intertwine with other lives, including Nan, the owner of the house, Greg, Henry’s half-brother, and various lovers and ex-lovers as this dark cloud that will soon become a full-blown epidemic descends upon them. Treat is brutally honest in his depiction of the gay community and the lives that will soon be extinguished by this virus. However, as other reviewers have pointed out, this is much more than a story about the gay community in Seattle in the early days of the AIDS epidemic when people still didn’t know much about this dreadful and tragic virus. This is a story about love, loss, and salvation:“When we are gone, the two of us will recall what forks we took in the road, and the reasons why. Even our mistakes will look like the miracles they were. Henry, lie next to me. The chemicals we invited in and the viruses we did not race through our blood now, they are there because we are human. Be with me, Henry. The odds were always stacked against us, but so what. I want to be with you.”This is one of the most powerful and moving novels I have read this year. Kudos to Big Table Publishing Company for publishing such a seminal and powerful novel.Jeffrey Miller,The Panama Affair

I loved the author's use of local color. I could see the Yellow House and knew the locations described on Capitol Hill and Fremont. The story has its dark turns, but was a wonderful read, especially for anyone who lived in the city in the 1980s.

Two characters move the narrative of The Rise and Fall of the Yellow House forward: Nan and Jeff. Nan is a straight, recent middle-aged divorcee looking for purpose; Jeff is a gay, 30-something professor looking for purpose. Different genders, sexual orientations, and life stages, but similar dilemmas—how do you live in a world of uncertainties and purposelessness? Treat’s subject matter is heavy, but his story is mundane; there is no moral, no point, no ah ha moment. There is only the bleakness of life.The book is well written with a tight narrative. There are elements of magical realism and glimmers of light here, but there is also an inescapable darkness that makes one wonder how anyone made it out of the 20th Century alive.The AIDS epidemic, once loud, ugly and violent, has become quiet as the battle against it has become more successful and the frontlines have receded to the margins. So it is surprising and perhaps uncomfortable for this Yellow House to rise as a reminder of a now mostly bygone era. Yet there is a truth here that is recognizable to many, especially urban dwellers. This novel taps into the underlying fear associated with living. While this book fits comfortably within AIDS literature, the disease takes backseat to the more immediate questions: how do you define your purpose, and how do you go on after tragedy?In this, The Rise and Fall of the Yellow House is evocative and reflective. Yet, there is little the reader is left with but the blanket of fear under which all the primary characters huddle. In that, Treat leaves this reader wanting more—not for the sake of a happy ending, but for the sake of balance. There are always survivors, but here there is only devastation and loss. These characters, masterfully made flesh and blood, never have the benefit of a laugh, a real connection or any joy. The rise is so short and the fall so permanent.**Adapted from [...]. I received this book in exchange for an honest review.**

Very good novel. Really captured some of the world I remember from the beginning of the epidemic. And from a lost Seattle too

I really loved this novel by John Treat The Rise and Fall of the Yellow House. Such a moving, haunted and Fate-Full story of love and sex in Seattle in the early 80's I really loved it. It really brought back my own haunted year as a Freshman at University of Washington around then. I recommend this wonderful novel highly!