For some folks, beauty is like Halloween candy: great while it lasts, but it leaves a wistful feeling when it's gone. If only beauty--and good health--were as easy to replenish as a candy dish. That's what the protagonists of Davey Davis's graceful novel Casanova 20 discover, with heartbreaking brutality. California native Adrian has a problem many people might kill for: he's astonishingly beautiful. As a kid, all that beauty yielded attention from strangers that included "amorous postcards, billets-doux, poems, and death threats." As a 29-year-old in New York, however, he loves attracting male and female paramours, a perfect career for an unserious man "who doesn't vote and uses his jury summons to collect nail clippings." But then he takes his N95 mask off one day in 2021, at the height of the Covid-19, and uncovers a frightening development: "He is not beautiful anymore."
Davis dramatizes Adrian's perceived transformation in admirably delicate strokes. They do the same with Adrian's friend Mark. Three decades older than Adrian, Mark is a renowned artist. Tech millionaires buy his work, and he's the recipient of a MacArthur "genius" grant. He's also a recovering alcoholic who's grieving the death of his partner and is dying of the same illness that claimed his mother and sister. Mark's and Adrian's stories intersect in unexpected ways that include their evenings together watching VHS tapes Mark's sister left behind, erotic fare such as Hot World and Erômenos. Beauty sometimes fades, but the drama never does in this appealingly off-kilter work. --Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer