SOURCE: Scull, Andrew. “Losing the One You Love.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4885 (15 November 1996): 15.

In the following excerpt, Scull alleges that Heaven's Coast is a wrenching, detailed description of loss and Doty's reengagement with the world after the death of his partner, Wally Roberts.

Losing the one you love hurts—hurts more deeply and profoundly than almost anything else in our experience. It claws and tears at the soul—most savagely, it would seem on Brodkey's account, when the object of one's love is oneself. Perhaps not, though, among those less relentlessly self-centred than he, a fact brought home in another memoir by a writer haunted by the AIDS virus, the award-winning poet, Mark Doty. Unlike Harold Brodkey, Doty is part of an extended community to whom he matters, and who matter deeply to him. There is, first and foremost, his long-time lover, Wally Roberts. But there are also...