Since the 80s when AIDS became rampant, its face has not changed. Its name, though not as raging in the headlines these days, has not been forgotten. What is different is each individual life it claims and the story of that life.

Philip Luing’s book, From Particles and Disputations, is the story of one of those lives lost – a celebration of Jeffrey Francis John Lalonde who succumbed to AIDS in 1994, twelve years after he met Philip. During their relationship, Philip liked to write down his thoughts and record their memories in brief passages and verse. This book is a collection of his writings. As Philip states in the Forward: “one of my greatest comforts was to sort through and organized a drawer full of mere lines drawn on frail paper – birthday cards, holiday greeting, anniversary remembrances, various notes I’d written, a few he’d written me. Jeffery wasn’t much of a writer. He had a gift for spontaneously saying what he was thinking, then showing by his action what he meant by it.”

It’s always fun to discover new love, both in real life and on the written page. That sense of happiness shines through in the earlier passages when the couples’ love is fresh and exciting. As the years progress, the relationship ages but we still see that magic in Philip’s words.

The timeline of the book focuses mainly on birthdays, Valentine’s Day, Christmas, and their anniversary. While this pattern becomes very repetitive, the words are new each time and give the reader hope that both men were very happy in their relationship. Of course every relationship has its dark moments, and the reader already knows the shadow that was cast on this couple early on, but theirs is a story of love and I was glad to see the focus on that.

 (To read the complete review, please click on the link.)